A Splash of Cerulean for His Pallet
by doubleshotofcaffeine
Summary: When Ash leaves Misty a year prior with no notice or goodbye, it leaves Misty desolate and broken, even more so than when he replaced her with the gorgeous Dawn and May. Upon once again meeting, will Ash be able to mend her heart with his untold feelings?
1. Chapter 1

**author's note: this is my first ever fanfic. chapters will get longer, this was just a warm-up. chapters will also get more complex and more adult as well, and that's why the rating is what it is. i'm open to all comments, suggestions, and especially support. thanks. :)  
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It felt as if the sunset had darted across the sky in its daily route. The sun now sat in its final glory modestly on the horizon, its dying rays still brilliantly beaming spouts of molten ruby and tangerine across the landscape. The rays glimmered across the pond, glittering into a kaleidoscope when met with a wave or ripple emitted from the girl's kicking, little feet.

Unfortunately, the suns embers held no comparison to the girl's fiery hair, igniting even more vividly in the twilight coloring of the landscape. Even the sky had nothing on her sapphirine gaze, twinkles flitting vacantly in her eyes as she stared into the water's depths.

Misty hadn't been to her dock in years, it felt. The boards she and her sisters had used to build it had tragically lost their luster to the weather, the rain molding and weakening the once seemingly invincible wood. She remembered how difficult it was to attain that wood...every time a carpenter would go on their lunch break during the construction of the Cerulean Gym, she and Daisy, her eldest sister, would tip-toe on their tiny little feet and split the weight of the wood between them, both of them holding an end of a two by four and quickly escaping the scene of the crime as fast as their small legs could manage. Chests heaving from the effort they were exerting on their tiny, immature lungs, they had brought the wood in its final destination to the pond. Here they brought it, and here they built this miniature dock, and here she sat.

A faint, ghost of a smile sat teasingly at the edge of Misty's lips, threatening to break through at the memory. She sat back, her elbows supporting her, her feet still doing strange little dances in the water.

Thinking back, Misty knew she or her sisters wouldn't have gotten in trouble for taking the wood. The carpenters were friends of her mother and father's, doing the job on a discount. She remembered the particular face of the worker from whom she required the very plank she was sitting on. His face was wrinkled and humble, sporting a constant warm, gentle smile. He wouldn't harm a Caterpie, even if it was devouring his lunch. She supposed it was all in the fact that she was committing an act looked down upon in society–larceny–and though absolutely petty in its degree, that act got her adrenaline pumping through her five-year-old limbs. It was like an adventure to her and her siblings. And what child doesn't crave adventure?

Now, fourteen years later, Misty still couldn't answer the question. Children have a trait which acquires them to _need _adventure. She knew of one in particular, one who was born with adventure coursing through his veins, tainting his very destiny. One who she traveled with on and off since the age of twelve, embarking with him on his erratic and–in retrospect–almost lunatic journeys. One who replaced her throughout the years with younger and unbearably gorgeous girls. One who she was seeing in two days for the first time in a year.

Her eyes pricked with water. She bit her tongue down, hard, and stifled whatever sensation was rising like lava in her chest. Misty remembered the last time they had met. It was at the annual Cerulean carnival. He left that very night. Gone by morning. No goodbye, no phone call afterward, no note, no text messages, no letters. Nothing. Not even breakfast at the kitchen table the next morning, something Misty could never see that boy going without.

In fact, she wasn't even seeing him tomorrow on _his_ accord. No, it was his mother who had insisted Misty stop by and at least make an appearance at his welcome home party.

_"I'm positive he'll be delighted to see you, dear," _she had said.

_"But..." Misty interjected, only to be again shushed off by a delusional Delia Ketchum._

_"No but's! Just come, I'll call you tomorrow to make sure you're safely on your way. Goodbye now!"_

She had hung up before Misty could put up a better fight–before she had even had time to put one together in her hurricane of thoughts. Blood tainted her cheeks, drawn there from the anger she didn't have a chance to release on the telephone. She could now think of a million and a half arguments that she could have made, but there was no point; it was too late. Why did her wit lock up when most needed–in her bouts of wrath?

Not that she would have ever disrespected Mrs. Ketchum, even if she had mustered up some sort of argument to do so with.

Dumbfounded, Misty's delicate hand had supported the phone limply against her porcelain cheek, the Cerulean Gym's main hot line singing it's mocking dead-line tone into her ear.

Her pulse hammered away even recalling that conversation, her heart pumping and wheezing an unfamiliar rhythm.

Finally, Misty had exhaled a long-held in breath, a breath she was unaware that she had even been holding onto, and hung up the phone.

One word had sighed itself out of her pillowy lips, escaping against her will.

"_Ash...."_

Now, sitting on the dock, her thoughts swarmed and swirled madly again and again with that one word, _Ash, Ash, Ash._

She pulled her knees up to her chest, her feet now out of the pond, the extra water sliding off her toes and sifting through the maze of splintered wood underneath her heels trying desperately to find the pond once more. Misty rubbed her face vigorously into her legs as if trying to smear that word off the slate board of her mind. Suddenly the dock was very uncomfortable, the stray, peeling wood prodding and needling at the bare of her exposed upper legs. Shifting, she took her face out of the crevasse of her meeting legs, resting it atop her knees. Something new was added to the portrait of her face, however: a glistening, solitaire tear sliding down her cheek. It left a trail of hot salt before it leapt off, combining into the ponds own water supply.

Misty lifted her petite hand to her face, wiping away the leftover saline trail vigorously with the heel of her palm. She stood, taking one last longing stare at the pond, before grabbing her backpack and throwing it over her shoulder. If she was going to Pallet Town, she had to start packing some decent clothes.

A Magikarp flippantly bound somewhere from the pond behind her, acrobatically twisting through the air, until gravity brought it back down where it dove gracefully back into the pond from whence it came, disappearing again into the soft, indigo blankets of water.

Misty didn't hear the splash, however, her mind was still too occupied with the crazed buzzing of that all too familiar name.

_Ash._


	2. Chapter 2

UPDATED VERSION!: why didn't anyone tell me this chapter got butchered by some weirdo upload or something? wellllll...fixed. now it should at least be legible. :)

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**disclaimer, which i regrettably forgot to add in the last chapter: i don't own pokemon. apologies go out to the beloved satoshi tajiri for forgetting to mention this. ;)**

**author's note: i'm deciding to change the rating on this to 'teen' because i don't think i'm going to go through with the initially intended raw, sheer, and gutsy pain i had planned for all the characters to endure. apologies also go out to whatever audience is following this story because of this.**

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Misty's blue backpack sat open on her bed as she searched frantically through her closet, tossing aside clothes that might be of interest in the grand finale of her closet excavation. Blurs of motley colors smeared past her blue walls– shirts, jeans, shorts, socks– cutting through the lovely sugar scent that masked her room and landing comfortably near, around, and, on a lucky shot, on her bed. _I'll sort through it later_, she had told herself. She was looking for one shirt in particular, a shirt she was sure would catch her eye the instant her eyes met it, even if it were to be in the peripheral of her vision. Casting more attire through the air, digging deeper into the depths of her unsorted, chaotic closet, she caught a glimpse of something a pallid shade of teal, something silken, something sleeveless...the item she had been searching for initially. She clutched at it and released it from the closets hold with a hard tug. It snapped back at her, the garment now limp in her grasp. Misty held the other strap up delicately, softly examining the turquoise tank top. Folding it over her arm, she walked slowly over to her bed, perching quietly on the edge of it. Her eyes trailed softly over the minor details of the tank top; it was a pastel turquoise hue, soft and wispy just like the sky on a breezy summer day. A delicate, tiny bow adorned the baby doll style material at the gathering right under the bosom, and a single row of little ruffles trailed daintily at the bottom seam of the shirts edge.

Misty remembered the last night she had worn it. It had also been the last time she had seen Ash, an entire year prior. She vacantly bundled the material into her tiny fists and brought it up to her face. She breathed in and a light gasp escaped her mouth–oh, those smells! Though ancient and tainted with the slightest scent of dusted closet, she knew those smells. A much less potent version of that night came rushing at her, breaching her nostrils. She smelled the faint wisps of buttered popcorn, and the sticky-sweet scent of candied apples accompanied soon after into the alluring potion. But, no, those were only undercurrents to the main flow of odor that tantalized her brain, teasing and pricking sharply at her growing nostalgia. The primary odors were sandalwood and a deep, somehow masculine vanilla, combined with dirt and holding, still, hints of peppermint and coffee and so many other scents. Misty was incorrect when she thought you couldn't shove the smells into a single word, because the word came abruptly to her mind.

The word was Ash.

A frustrated growl, almost feral, ripped through her vocal chords. Ash, Ash, Ash! Was it even healthy for her to be seeing him so suddenly? With only two days to sort through the memories she had so blatantly forced herself to ignore?

No. She didn't think it was healthy in the least. But she was going through with it, for Mrs. Ketchum. Whether or not she would even talk to Ash was still debatable, with the scale leaning far more towards the shut-up-and-get-out-of-there-as-soon-as-possible hemisphere of the seesaw. Her brow furrowed when she even attempted to think of words to say to him. Their last encounter left her too bewildered, her position with Ash in total chaos.

_Total chaos...or total oblivion_, she thought solemnly to herself.

Ash probably forgot entirely of their last meeting; it wasn't likely to hold much vitality in that thick head of his. She could understand why it wouldn't, though. With girls like Dawn and her glossy, long, royally blue hair and May with her angelic face, blue eyes beaming beautifully, she was positive Ash had classified Misty as unimportant. She didn't totally blame him.

Sucking in a breath through her gritted teeth, she sauntered to her closet, picking up the clothes she had thrown aside which somewhere in her dig she had decided were appropriate for the upcoming events. Gathering them, she folded them, and placed them in her bag. Misty folded the cyan top last, hugging it to her nose one final time and allowing herself to sink once more into the worldly aroma of the Cerulean County Carnival; into the sweet baked pastry of fried dough and the heavenly sugar-smell of cotton candy. Into the delightful smell of a crisp night sky, into that wooded yet sweet cologne of that raven-haired boy who seemed to cloud almost all rational thought in her psyche_._

Misty pulled it from her face and delicately placed it into her bag.

_Enough with the bullshit, Mist, get it together._

But even those commands from the harsher corridors of her mind brought back memories of him. 'Mist' had been his nickname for her. Go figure.

She knew to be able to get to Pallet Town without having some sort of panicked mental breakdown she was going to have to get her thoughts in order. And to do that, she was going to have to analyze that last night she and Ash were within each other's presence. She heaved a sigh out angrily in defeat, and crawled to the center of her bed, burying her head underneath a feather-stuffed pillow.

_Where to begin...._

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Misty heard the faint, soprano squeals and giggles of her sisters in the bedroom next to her own. When the outburst seemed as if it had died out, she again lifted her mascara brush back up to her eyelashes, only to be again interrupted by a low murmur that sounded something along the lines of "Josh is like, _totally_ going to be in love with you when he sees your, like, boobs in that shirt", which was then proceeded by another unified chorus of girlish didn't help that she wasn't exactly a master at the whole makeup thing, only wearing it on family holidays and days her sisters decided to experiment their own cosmetic skills on her.

She balled up her fist and slammed it into the wall in front of her.

"Will you guys just shut the hell up for two minutes, _please_?" she yelled furiously into her wall.

The room was silent for a minute, but she heard the thin walls betray her sisters and resonate a soft "_Tch_, like, what is _her_ deal?", followed by a string of agreeing "yeah"s and "totally"s.

Misty took advantage of the rare silence and finished applying her makeup, gliding lip gloss over her lips and popping them satisfyingly once she was done.

She stood back from her mirror, doing one last self-examination. The top she wore was sleeveless, and though it clung only to her chest and was loose and flowing everywhere else, it had an elegant touch to it, the aquamarine bringing out the peachy blush in her cheeks, the bronze in her shoulders and face, the soft blue twinkle in her placed her hand on her hip, shifting her body and looking at her reflection over her shoulder. Her skinny jeans clung to her curved feminine hips, and her hair, finally long now after years of growing it out, cascaded into a curled waterfall of fire down her back. She turned back around, smoothing out her shirt, and grabbed her cellphone and cash. Placing it in her back pocket, Misty turned off the light in her room and shut her door quietly, hoping to not attract any attention from her siblings.

Sure, her sisters drove. Sure, they would've saved her a twenty minute walk. Sure, she would've arrived in style in their shiny new Camaro. But, alas, she decided to save the headache, the brain cells, and the sanity for the carnival that night. She slid down the stairs as quietly as she could, rushing through the battle room in the hopes that the sharp chlorine smell from the Gyms pool wouldn't cling to her. She snagged her sandals from in front of the door, pulled them on, and snuck out the door.

Misty rested her hands in her jean pockets, breathing in the frosty September air. The temperature cut into her bare arms almost too instantly, and she realized she should have grabbed a sweatshirt, but, avoiding both the possibility of her sisters catching and antagonizing her on her for once girly attire and the sheer impatience of not getting to fair grounds fast enough, she decided not to chance it.

The night was unbelievably clear and fresh, almost every star twinkling despite the harsh veil from the Cerulean City lights. The moon was full and round and freckles of existing craters could even be spotted upon further scrutiny.

Misty was lost in the stark beauty of the night sky, and almost too soon the atmosphere changed to that of a feverish, chaotic feel. The clean smell of ozone was replaced with that of the carnival and the frost gone with the warmth of baking foods and brushing bodies of bustling people, the glorious muteness now a rumbling mixture comparative to a school chorus, except with each person assigned to sing a different song at a different pitch at a different volume and with hundreds of more members than a school chorus would assign under normal circumstances. Whirling, blinking lights from the amusement rides flashed in her peripheral, streaking and whistling in their swiftness, screams melting together like molasses as the passengers of these rides exclaimed their terror.

Misty reached the barrier of the carnival, stepping from calm and serene into excited and electrified. She felt her blood run a bit quicker and her limbs lighten as the new aura settled into her bones. Looking around, her eyes met forty, maybe fifty others sets– blue, hazel, green, gray, even brown– but not the pair of eyes she was looking for. Just as she reached for her phone in her back pocket it buzzed, indicating a text message.

She pulled it out, flipping it open.

_Where are you?_

Misty's heart raced even more speedily as she looked at the sender's name on the screen. Looking at the rows of concession stands surrounding her, she chose the closest, a little tent labeled "Sean's Smoothies", and typed it back into her phone, sending the response back to him.

Eventually as Misty decided she must have looked very stupid standing there alone, her mind split between continuing the wait and wandering off on her own search. She was about to turn on her heel and walk off when she felt a warm pair of arms envelope her from behind, folding around her waist gently. If her nostrils hadn't immediately detected the soft notes of spiced vanilla and wooded sandalwood, whoever was holding her would've been greeted with a sharp kick to the crotch. His chin rested lightly on her shoulder, his barely-there prickle of five o'clock shadow brushing her arm, thick tufts of black hair tickling her cheek and neck. She felt his breath on her arm, masked in an odd but alluring mixture of chilly spearmint and somehow countered by the scent of a warm roast of caramel coffee. A chill ran down her neck, and before she let him have the chance to feel the pins of goose bumps run across her skin, she pulled his hands from her waist. The second she removed the embrace she missed it, _craved_ it even, but self control was at the top of her priority list and she wouldn't let Ash's false show of affection touch her heart. She bubble wrapped her ribs back up, forcing back the choke of love she felt boil in her at his touch.

Sarcastic, mean stabs of humor always helped. She'd go with that route.

Turning around and looking up almost a foot to meet his gaze with a glare, she forced a witty smile on her lips and said, "You're lucky I could recognize your stench from a mile away Ketchum, otherwise you would've had my fist to your mouth in an instant."

Ash's eyes were a molten mocha, ablaze with some sort of emotion she couldn't decipher: he'd been wearing it a lot lately and it bugged her to no end that she couldn't read what it was that was on his mind. Tonight the look was even more sparkly, his eyes melting into a cocoa whirlpool of unknown emotion. He was grinning idiotically now, his arms withdrawn and behind his head, supporting it as he stood towering in front of her comfortably.

"Love ya too, Mist," he said, still smiling playfully, his eyes remaining softly on hers. The words stabbed a barbed dagger into her heart. She assumed it belonged to Cupid, that bastard. She brought up the will power to gag a throaty, disgusted heave of a sigh and, breaking the stare first, rolled her eyes dramatically.

Ash just laughed, his eyes never averting hers.

She averted his, however.

Misty hadn't noticed him at first, but Ash had brought Brock with him, as well. Brock stood there analytically, looking back and forth between Ash and Misty, weighing the amount of tension between the two and whether or not it was enough to tip the table into a fight. He decided it wasn't enough though, his muscles relaxing and his back straightening. He smiled at Misty and said, "Hey Misty, long time no see."

Misty skipped small talk and hugged him tightly, her words muffled in his chest.

"I haphn't theen you in forefer, Vrock!" she said through the material of his vest.

He hugged her back tightly, and they released each other a second after.

"Seriously, though, don't be a stranger. I know you're busy with the new _married life _and all"–Misty exaggerated the 'married life', making her tone around the words sound as if the idea of marriage was illogical and stupid–"but whenever you have a minute, stop by the Cerulean Gym so we can catch up!"

"Yeah, I definitely will Misty. I miss you. Maybe I'll take Julia down with me to introduce her to you. She's a real sweetheart, you know. I would've brought her tonight but she's working–a cavern collapsed on a family of Growlithe and she was called in on an emergency. I'm assuming you've met the nurse from Viridian City before?"

Misty nodded, remembering vaguely the time she was twelve and she, Ash, and Pikachu managed to blow up her Pokemon Center. Ash had only been ten then, newly setting out on his Pokemon adventure. Her eyes darted to him for a minute and he smirked, giving her a mischievous, knowing look. She mentally swore at herself for letting the heat run to her ears from that smile. Thank God it didn't reach her cheeks in time to give her away.

"Yeah, I've met her before," Misty responded, still nodding. "She seemed...nice. I'm happy for you, Brock. It's about time you've found yourself a good girl. All those years of chasing after Jennys and Joys finally rewarded you, eh?" She punched his arm playfully for emphasis.

Brock smiled, his heavily-lidded eyes glimmering.

"Yeah, I'm lucky. And everything I went through...everything I went through, I'd do it all again if it still meant winning her at the end. My Jules was worth _everything_."

Misty's eyes lit up.

"That's _so_ romantic," she beamed.

Brock smiled, and looked as if he was suddenly brought back to reality, his eyes focusing and looking between Misty and Ash.

"So, uh, what's on the menu tonight?" Brock questioned, changing the subject.

Misty hadn't known either, and brought her gaze to Ash in response. It's funny how the situation worked out, Ash automatically re-becoming the leader again in minutes. Though their group had been separated for only five months and Ash and Misty for only a week, taking a break for Brock's new found life, it was as if Ash was composed by some form of omnipotent being to always be the leader among them. Misty figured it was some sort of radiation his DNA let off. She snorted at the theory.

"Come on guys, it's a fair! You can't think of _anything_ to do?" Ash chuckled softly, his arms finally dropping from behind his head to his sides once more.

Misty looked around, taking in once more all the rides, all the concession stands, all the food.

"Rides?" Misty piped up, looking doubtfully between Ash and Brock.

"_Ugh, Misty,_" Ash gargled, holding his stomach dramatically, "I'm _so_ hungry though."

Misty hid her giggle with a glare, shoving his shoulders back with a light push.

"If you knew the answer then why'd you ask?" she interrogated angrily.

"Just testing your leadership skills, Mist. You gotta work on those, 'specially if you're still dreaming big on becoming the _best water-type trainer ever_."

Her glare hardened.

"Whatever, Ash."

Ash cut her off with a super-hero-ish pose and a point to the nearest fried dough stand.

"To the food!" Ash exclaimed, meandering off, Misty on his tail and Brock following shortly on hers.

They ordered their food, talk of the past, present, and future inheriting most of the conversation at the table between bites of warm fried dough. They joked, they argued, they laughed– just like old times. Misty felt her heart throb at the desire she suddenly felt to travel back in time to relive those days. She had took them for granted, no doubt. When Ash spoke of the future adventures he was planning on having beyond and afar, he spoke boldly in mountainous boasts, and though totally exaggerated (as she knew Brock could pick up on as well), she said nothing and instead used the opportunity to look at his nearly-mature face, his hardening jaw, his melted chocolate eyes, the soft curvature of his lips....

And even when he wasn't speaking and Brock instead was, she'd sneak peaks out of the corner of her eye and between coils of hair that fell loose from behind her ear, examining his profile, his responses, his nods and his expressions and even blinks. She was surprised to actually meet his gaze a few times when she looked at him. He smiled delicately at her when this happened, and she returned his smile with a dirty look. Classic Misty, she figured. Might as well give him what he expected.

The night finally started winding down, crowds dispersing and the buzz of chatter dying down to a mere whisper in comparison. Brock had just finished a heated argument with Ash about the effects of catnip being added into Pokemon food, Ash defending his point with facts Gary had handed to him the last time they met and Brock countering them with his own knowledge. At the end of it, Ash won, only because Brock knew a fight against the thick-headed boy would be entirely pointless.

Brock sighed heavily, sounding almost like a senior citizen, taking a glance at the watch circling his wrist.

"I'm going to go home and pass out though, breakfast tomorrow with Jules and the in-laws...," Brock trailed off lazily, a yawn shaking his body, "It was nice seeing the two of you again, though, really," he smiled kindheartedly, nodding in recognition at both Misty and Ash.

Ash and Misty said their goodbyes, and Brock departed from the table they were at.

It was just them. Misty shivered at the thought.

Ash noticed the display, and questioned softly, "Cold?"

Misty remembered that she hadn't grabbed her sweatshirt from the coat rack before she left.

"No," she responded stubbornly, but before she could say anything else, Ash smiled and got up from the table, taking off the royal blue zip-up hoodie he was wearing and gestured it towards Misty for her to take. When Misty shook her head in nonacceptance he rolled his eyes dramatically, snorting.

"You've always been so stubborn," and with that he draped it over her shoulders in the chair.

It was difficult to concentrate with his warmth, his cologne, his essence suddenly enveloping her. Every breath she took she realized she was inhaling _him_. She tried not to look too drugged as she spoke, taking in shallower breaths to try and cleanse her train of thought.

"Thanks," she muttered, and stood, slipping her arms into the too-long sleeves, rolling them up to her dainty wrists.

"So...what now?" she continued when he said nothing.

"You tell me, future-water-type-champion," he said, sticking his tongue out playfully.

Misty swirled on her ankle, looking at the closing concession stands and rides, the dying fair grounds.

"You wanna just...walk around for a bit? The carnival is dead. I bet they're gonna kick us out soon, anyways...," she drifted the sentence into silence, looking around at the sweeping carnies who, on occasion, would look up from their job and shoot them a dirty look that clearly read _leave_.

Ash shrugged, "Sure."

They walked aside each other in silence, leaving the fair, walking down an anonymous street in the darkness. The stars were exquisite, lighting the city and the very street they were walking on brilliantly. The world around them was shut-off and dim, but that's the way the world always was when she was with Ash. Even the crickets ceased their chimes of gossip and the wind its whistling cries.

Misty had her arms crossed over her chest, her head down and eyes watching the yellow double-lines which indicated the center of the lane. A small smile rested at the edge of her lips, though barely noticeable. She didn't mind the quiet, as long as Ash was by her side to endure it with her. That's the way it had always been: her going through hundreds of obstacles which she wasn't exactly the most in favor for, all just to remain in his company. Ash strolled quietly, his hands in his jeans pockets, looking down at the road. Misty shot inconspicuous glances at him through the corner of her eye. His jaw was tense and she saw his teeth digging into the soft tissue of his bottom lip in heavy concentration. His brow was furrowed and he looked almost as if he were in _pain_.

They continued walking, Misty starting to feel paranoid about his concentrated demeanor, when Ash alas broke the silence.

"Tonight was fun, huh?"

Misty responded with a faint _mhm_.

"Who'd have ever thought Brock would find a girl! I mean, _our_ Brock!" Ash chuckled softly.

"Yeah, but...I'm happy for him. He deserves the best. Personally, I'm glad he found her," Misty pursed her lips to stifle a smile as she recalled how Brock's eyes glazed over when he spoke of this "Jules" woman. Misty had always been a sucker for any kind of romance, Brock's romance having no different effect on her mind. She genuinely thought it was adorable.

"Me too," Ash agreed while nodding.

"I'm envious of him, to be able to find that in another person," Misty confided, her voice weakening in volume. What she _really_ had meant though was that she was envious of him for being able to find that in another person and have the feeling _returned_.

Ash said nothing.

She dared another quick glance at him through her eyelashes to see that the pained expression had returned to his face.

"Hey...are you alright, Ketchum?" Misty asked, her tone saturated in a concern she would've masked with sarcasm under normal circumstances, circumstances where he wasn't so indecipherable and maze-like. Ash's emotions could usually be read as clearly as a common recipe book, but whatever was brewing in his mind seemed to be some sort of venomous concoction, tainting his usual happy-go-lucky attitude with something more similar of a parent discovering their child had some incurable sickness. He looked depressed, the glimmer that had previously been building in his eyes demolished.

"I've just been thinking lately," he replied vaguely.

Silence once again glazed between them. When Misty realized he wasn't about to say more, she pressed, "About...?"

Ash looked at her now, a forced smile curving his lips up. It didn't touch his eyes, the shimmer still hibernating deep within him. Misty silently pleaded in her head for it to return.

"Nothing really," he said, his voice low.

Misty groaned, "_Oh,_ come _on_ Ash. Just spit it out already!"

He stopped walking then. She followed suit, discontinuing her steps on the yellow equators of the road. He continued staring at the ground, and now that they were facing each other, his thick fringe of his dark bang covered his eyes. She could still see his lips though, and observed that his teeth were still sawing into the soft tissue of them.

"You don't really...I mean...you don't...ugh, _God_ I'm going to sound stupid–" he shook his head and a dark chuckle fell through his lips, "But...you don't _really_ hate me, do you?"

Misty stared at him, a blank expression crossing her features. She wasn't expecting that. The question caught her off guard, and every response she'd formed in her head–_I'm here for you Ash, _or _Just keep trying, Ash_, or _Don't give up, Ash, _or _Just leave me the hell alone and go find Dawn and May, maybe _they_ can help you with your problems, Ash_–none of them could even answer the question he shot at her. He kept his face down, his expression unreadable.

"Uh–" Misty cleared her throat stupidly, "Well...uhm...do I get three lifelines on this one?" she tried joking, to no avail as Ash remained quiet.

Finally, she came up with the best response she could: "I don't really get where you're going with this."

Ash looked up fiercely, a new flame in his eyes, though less brilliant than the glint he'd had previously that night.

"Of course you don't," he accused, his tone icy and his intense glare still colder.

Misty narrowed her eyes.

"What the fuck is your problem?" she spat vehemently, turning to him and shoving his shoulders back, hard. His mood swings were giving her whip flash. What came next? Joy? Anger? Fear? Sorrow? And yet none of those were the feelings she yearned for. Her heart was doing something similar to what the Titanic did on its final day of life: broke in two, and sank into the dark roiling depths of the frigid ocean. Tonight it was becoming painfully more obvious that her feelings would never be returned by this amazing boy, this boy who'd saved her on numerous occasions and ruefully held the metallic skeleton key to her heart. Especially now: was it _contempt_ he was throwing at her? What did she even _do_ to deserve that? How many more punches to the face could she take before her skull deteriorated?

She felt her cheeks boil and her eyes sting with the briny betrayal of tears. Misty fought them as hard as she could, using every bit of willpower her body could bring forth. They were on the verge of spilling, she felt it, and very soon it would be gravity betraying her as well.

_If you cry Misty Waterflower, I will go home and jump you right off the roof of the gym. I will drown you in the pool, I will find someway to rev up a disturbed and well-deserved payback if you let those spill from your eyes. SUCK IT UP, NOW._

But as threatening as all those scenarios were, she couldn't control them. She felt them balancing precariously on her bottom lids, almost _daring_ her to do or say one more thing wrong.

"_My _problem? Really, Mist? What is _yours?_ That _was_ the original question, after all," he said back angrily, the 'after all' speeding in mockingly for the finale.

They didn't recognize it, but they were both yelling now. The crickets had joined in the chaos, and the winds picked up viciously once more, gales whipping and howling and screaming past the two in the road.

"YOU!" Misty screamed, her strong wall of self control annihilated. The tears flooded over the red-rimmed barrier of her bottom lids. "YOU ASH KETCHUM! _YOU_ ARE MY PROBLEM!"

She spun on her heel, her hair spinning like a wheel of fire as she turned. She was desperate to get away now, to wipe savagely at the traitor tears that painted her cheeks. Misty didn't want Ash to see them, for him to see that she did have weaknesses, weaknesses besides bugs or carrots or peppers. _Real_ weaknesses. Especially since that weakness was him.

She stomped angrily down the street, tearing off his hoodie and throwing it into the road. She never looked back to see if he was following her, not that she expected him to, anyways. Her stomps quickly shifted to strides and then to a full out run. _Dawn _or _May_ or some other beautiful, model-esque girl was probably awaiting him. Why waste the time on her? She felt fresh tears come in a new wave at those thoughts, those thoughts that had been pent up for years now. The self-hatred, the guilt, the sheer sorrow that enclosed on her now almost buckled her knees. She hated herself. She hated everything about herself. _Why couldn't she just be good enough? For _him?

That was the thought that finally broke her down, her knees weakening and causing her to stumble in her course, collapsing forward. She felt the abrasion between skin and tar on her knees, grating them, turning them tender and raw. Her tears turned into sobs now, loud and wet and pained, but not because of her knees. Not because of the fall. Not because of her over-exertion of energy because of the run. Her lungs felt like they were caving in, and she was finding it difficult to suck in a full breath of air. She closed her eyes, desolate and broken and agonized, trying to regulate her breathing, her tears, her cracking heart.

And suddenly, she heard soft strides come around from behind her, coming to a stop in front of her. She felt a gentle thumb swipe ever-so-softly across her cheek bone, and another hand pillowed against the bottom of her face, supporting it. Opening her eyes slowly, she took in the features one by one. The angled jaw, the prickles and pines of overdue facial hair, the lush, spongy lips, slightly ajar, the perfectly sloped nose, the ebony feathers of hair that aimlessly whipped out from beneath his red and white cap, angelically falling over his eyes and his defined, cut out cheeks, and finally, on his eyes, the spark there thawed, glittering and melting in that renewed undefined emotion. He was so beautiful. _So_ beautiful. She felt her eyes well up once more at this, at knowing that this beautiful man would never, ever be hers.

He again wiped away at her tears lightly, bringing his forehead to hers, cooing a "shhh, it's okay, I'm sorry, shhh...I'm sorry...."

And before she knew what was happening, she felt his hand slightly tip her chin up, the other gently stroking down her face and to the hollow in her neck, gently cupping it. He tilted his head, and somewhere in the back of her frenzy of thoughts she knew she too tilted hers the opposite way. She felt his lips, soft and graceful and careful, graze against hers, softer than silk on glass. And maybe that was a proper analogy: he was silk: beautiful, elegant, perfect in his shining manner. And she was glass, ready to shatter with the slightest push. And she questioned later whether or not this had been the push that had indeed broken her, leaving her a glittering mess of vase on the floor, all joy spilled when the smash occurred, de-embedding itself from the ghosts of gleaming shards.

Ash pulled back, pulling her head into his chest, softly stroking her arms and her back, all the while cooing a melody of "shh"s and "I'm sorry"s into her ear. She could hear his heartbeat, hammering away rhythmically in a soft, calming ballad. Even his heart was perfect. Misty pushed her face further into his chest, her eyes closed, marveling at the beautiful psalm his heart sang. And with every beat, she felt herself falling further into the frightening depths of love.

But, alas, they couldn't sit in the middle of the road forever. She couldn't scare her sisters by coming home late, knees bloodied and eyes swollen. She couldn't keep Ash from May or Dawn or whoever was next. She couldn't be selfish and keep him to herself, she didn't deserve him–Misty, the damaged, scared little girl she that she was.

So she pulled herself from his embrace. The second his warmth and nurture left her she ached to return to it, but she didn't dare touch him. Him, Ash, the implicit Zeus of her broken being, and she, Tartarus, the desolate, deepest known part of the underworld.

She never returned her gaze to his, didn't dare be so bold as to get caught in the gorgeous web that was his eyes, and with a soft, "I have to go now. Goodbye, Ash", she turned and walked out of his life for an entire year.


	3. Chapter 3

**disclaimer: i don't own pokemon.**

**author's note: you thought it was entirely ash's doing that ash and misty didn't speak for a year, huh? wrong. ;)**

The days that followed that fateful night at the Cerulean County Carnival for Misty were lonely and forlorn. Ash didn't bother to contact her through any means, and this made her feel both brokenhearted and thankful. Though she knew she was being foolish and conceited by even flaring the slightest hope of its possibility, her heart withered at the fact that he didn't later sneak into her room or object when she pulled away from his soothing embrace. She knew it was a selfish and narcissistic thought, but it was a thought that played at the back of her subconscious almost daily. And yet she again was relieved, relieved that he could move on with his life without her. He didn't need an emotionally-ravaged being such as herself to anchor him down to the low level she was at. He didn't need to be steadily bothered by her presence, a presence that prevented him from even communicating with other girls without her jealous bouts interrupting the conversation. He just deserved _better_. Far, far, _far_ better. She figured she'd let him move on with his life with Dawn or May, they were a needed improvement for him. Calm, cool, and collected–that's at least how they always portrayed themselves. Ash needed that, someone to balance out his own childlike and pompous behavior with an opposite polar extremity. Misty just couldn't give that too him. She was far too wrathful, far too jealous, far too in-love to even be able to rationally control her emotions. She was just _too much_, and she knew he wouldn't ever achieve his ultimate goal of becoming the new Pokemon Master with her by his side, distracting him with her incoherent overemotional bullshit.

Misty hadn't learned until about two weeks afterward that he had even left the Kanto region. She had been laying in the soft comfort of her bed, eyes glazed over and half-lidded, swollen for probably the thirtieth time in that two-week period, when she heard the vibrations of her cell phone rattle her bedside table. Not letting off any intention to move and answer it, she let it ring itself out. Silence was only granted for about twenty seconds, however, before it began again to buzz. She slowly sat up in her bed, a dull curiosity walking itself through her mind. Her head felt heavy and stuffy and numb, and when she sat up, evidently too quickly, ebony spots speckled in a firecracker-like manner across her vision as the blood rushed quickly to her head, and she sat there with her eyes closed, her knees folded up and her head in turn resting on her knees, rubbing her temples in a circular motion in an attempt to rid herself of the vexing vertigo. How long had it been since she'd last eaten?

Her phone started vibrating once more. She hadn't noticed it had stopped in her crazed attempt to cure her lightheadedness. This was the third call in a row. Someone was eager to reach her. She felt the shards of her heart almost magnify back together in response, and the idea that perhaps it was Ash filtered through her mind. She reached for her phone, an electric excitement coursing in the cobwebbed corners of her head, but the magnetic force field that had held her heart in midair for that split second vanquished as she looked at the Caller ID, the electricity sparking out. She felt the glass remnants of her heart rain back into her abdominal cavity.

The curiosity, though dulled, was still there as her eyes lazily read who was calling her. _Delia Ketchum_, her phone read on the front screen.

She flipped open her phone.

"Hello?" Misty managed, though her voice cracked mid-word.

"Oh Misty, I'm so glad I got a hold of you," Delia had said, exasperated. Misty suddenly felt a deep remorse pulse through her veins at not answering sooner. Delia sounded almost as wounded as she assumed she herself did.

"Have you heard at all from Ash? I know he's a big boy and he doesn't need his mommy to worry about him anymore, but I haven't heard anything from him in two weeks, and that's just not like him! He didn't even say _bye_!" Delia continued in a rush, the word "bye" stabbing a dagger deep within Misty's chest from the sheer heartsick tone Delia broke into. But not only that...the word "bye" implied that he had left.

He was gone.

"Wait, what? He...h-he left? To where? _When_?" Misty heard her voice raise in a panicked octave as her fears multiplied and grew in size.

"So...so you don't know anything either?" Delia asked softly. She changed her tone abruptly, as if to stifle tears.

"No," Misty, answered, biting viciously at her lip to stifle a panicked flood of words that may have come out had she not.

A string of sobs broke out from the phones speaker after a very silent minute. Misty felt that dagger from earlier in the conversation burrow deeper into her chest, twisting and clawing its way at an already battered heart.

"H-h-heeee j-j--" Delia sucked in a wild gasp of air. Misty could almost hear her trying to take a shaky control over her cries.

"He just...?" Misty guessed, trying her best to delicately push Mrs. Ketchum on.

"J-jusst p-packed up-p and left-t! N-n-no n-note, n-nothing!" she sturdied her voice once more with a slow intake of air, "I called B-brock, but he ha-adn't heard a-anything either. Or Tra-acy. Or Ritchie. N-nothing a-at a-a-_all!_"

A fresh tide of tears washed into the speaker. Misty was determined not to let Mrs. Ketchum hear her cry, even though Delia herself couldn't seem to hold her own composure. To let her hear her weakened and defeated...no, Misty wasn't allowing herself to let out even a sob. She had to stay strong for Delia at least, even if she couldn't even stay strong for herself.

But Delia's sobs were a major threat to her forged calmness. She felt the fragments of her heart twinge with every new sob emitted from the heartbroken mother. The heartbroken mother, Delia, who had no one _but_ Ash. Misty at least had her sisters, no matter how much their shoulders were lacking in quality to cry on. Delia wasn't lucky enough to have that kind of stability. She had no husband, no siblings (that Misty at least knew of), no friends except for the constantly-busy Professor Oak, nothing. She took every ounce, every little particle of love that she had unknowingly hid in her soul and carefully sewed it into Ash, her precious baby boy. Ash was her all, her world. And now he was missing, gone without even an accidental minor trace left behind. Ash, the wielder of what love Delia had left.

The dagger finally did its job and cut into Misty's lungs at that statement. Because she knew, even if she couldn't relate to having absolutely nobody, she could definitely sympathize with that–with Ash running off, both her and Delia's hearts strapped precariously into his stupid little green backpack.

Misty felt a new feeling settle into her bones at last. An emotion so comforting to her, an emotion she resorted to if she lost control of the situation. Misty felt enraged.

But she didn't let it saturate her tone. Not yet.

"If I hear any news about him, I'll let you know Mrs. Ketchum. I promise. And you know that I'm always here for you if you ever need to talk, just call me, okay?"

A muffled "okay" came through the receiver, followed by a gracious "thank you so much" and a goodbye. Misty returned them and clicked her phone off.

And now that she wasn't on the phone with Delia, she let the anger flood heatedly through her veins, charging them with an electricity that felt like a very potent hit of ecstacy. A scream ripped through her throat, and before she could control it, she punched her wall, once, twice, five, ten, twenty times. She stopped when she noticed the smears of blood paint across the blue backdrop, looking even gorier against the azure contrast. Her knuckles stung and pierced brutally. She felt them trembling as if she was holding miniature erupting volcanoes in them.

_How could he!?_ How could he just up and leave his mother? His loving, caring, treasured mother? Brock? Professor Oak? Gary? _Any of them!_ How? HOW?!

...how could he leave _her?_

First her mom, then her dad, then Brock...and now Ash was added to the collection.

The collection of all those who had left her.

Misty felt the stifled sobs from earlier hit her squarely in the chest, and she collapsed again to her bed, feeling ripped apart at her usual steel-supported seams.

And this was her daily routine, used twice a day for two months, rinsed, lathered, repeated, before it cut its dosage down to once a day, and then finally quelled into a gravity-filled emptiness that slowly ate away at what little amount of a heart she had left.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Misty didn't really remember when she had fallen into the comfort of sleep, just that it had been a much needed, deep slumber that revitalized her weary limbs and rummaged head. She felt refreshed, awakening early before her alarm had began screaming its demands at her, had made a pot of coffee and had even eaten a piece of jellied toast. She had snagged her bag and was already on her way to the nearest bus stop. A sky blue thermos, adorned with little sailboats heading in this and that direction, rested warmly in her left hand, and the other hand supported the backpack that rested on her shoulder. She reached the bus station, sitting on the bench and bracing herself for whatever wait was to come. Misty opened her thermos and sipped delicately at the coffee, letting the warm twines of steam tickle her nose.

The bus rolled up more quickly than she had expected, shaking her from the stupor she had fell in as a result of her shielding herself with anticipation. Standing from the bench, Misty stepped on, and, examining the chart located above the farebox, counted out the amount of bills needed to take her to Viridian City. Pallet Town was still extremely small and rural in comparison to the more lively cities of Cerulean and Viridian. Buses didn't even pass into Pallet territory. She'd have to either walk the rest of the way to Pallet or pray that a driver would both pass by her _and_ pick her up, the latter of which was very, very rare to actually occur. Society has it built into their minds that hitchhikers, under those pretty, innocent little glazed eyes and shimmering halos, are always murderers and rapists underneath all the glitters and gold. Misty knew she herself would never pick up a hitchhiker unless she knew them personally, as hypocritical as it was. Plus, someone passing into Pallet Town? Slim to no chance of that happening. Pallet Town was a dead town, having probably less than nine hundred citizens occupying its borders. All limbs to a hierarchy located in Pallet Town ended in Pallet Town. Gary and Ash being reoccurring visitors made them a rare breed.

She inserted the bills into the money slot, and walked down the aisle to the last few seats, sitting in the third-to-last row on the right. There were few passengers aside from herself on the bus, all of whom appeared humble enough not to kidnap her if she were to just close her eyes for a few moments. Misty reached into her bag and pulled out her mp3 player, switching it to a modest lullaby and placing her ear buds in. Before she was aware of it happening she dozed off into a semi-conscious lull, only half-watching the scenery go flashing by in blurred, foggy streaks–the Cerulean River, Mount Moon, the hundreds of buildings masking the streets of Pewter City, The Pewter Gym, the road they carved out through the Viridian Forest foliage, and finally, she began to see the voracious sparkling monuments that clouded the Viridian sky. The whole ordeal went by much faster than she had expected....or at least that's how it felt. She got up and off the bus, yawning and arching her back felinely, taking her headphones out. Pulling her cell phone out of her back pocket and checking the time, she was surprised to see that three hours had actually gone by of sitting and dozing on the bus. And now that she did the math in her head, her back, neck, and shoulders ached at the realization, and she bent a little more limberly in to try and soothe the tender muscles and bones.

As she stretched, her hands enclosed on the now-hollow thermos in her hand.

_First thing's first...caffeine._

Misty began walking down the streets of Viridian, trying to spot anything that had the word _coffee _or _mocha_ or _latte_ or _cappuccino_ or even a blunt _buy caffeine, it's bad for you_!

Fortunately enough for Misty before she reached a high enough desperation level to resort to asking a stranger for directions, she spotted a sign that read _Brewed Awakenings_, and with it being the closest sounding thing to a coffee shop, she walked a bit quicker down the road, passing by a group of visitors all dressed entirely inappropriately for the chilled Viridian weather.

The font of the sign was a graceful cursive, despite the name of the facility. She stepped in and was instantly met with the luscious smell of coffee grinds and the sweet, milky smell of cream and sugar. The walls were striped with a deep burgundy hue and a somehow even darker brown, but the small fake fireplace in the westernmost wall gave the shop a comforting feel. She searched for the counter and found it to her almost-immediate right.

The employee who was at the counter had his back turned, putting a new filter and grinds into the various coffee pots aligned on the shelf behind him. He picked up a bag of french vanilla grits, and scooped mathematically in, pouring the amount into a filter, and then putting the filter into the pot and pressing a button. The machine started to gurgle and she saw him reach for a bag of caramel grinds next, and nostalgia again hit as she remembered one of the more prominent scents that composed Ash's natural cologne. Though Ash never drank coffee, finding it absolutely repulsive, there was an exception to his peculiar hatred, and that was the elusive caramel flavor. She had smelled it on her shirt the day before, and had completely forgot about his dislike for all coffee albeit that flavor. He would only drink it when absolutely necessary, however, and she could tell he was only trying to retain some part of his stubbornness by doing so. Misty recalled nights spent charged up on caffeine, adrenaline pumping through veins like rotten battery acid, where Ash wouldn't sleep because he was too busy with an intense training session with his Pokemon. These days were usually days prior to gym battles, or other battles just as equally important. Misty would stay up with him with the kettle over the fire, reloading scoops of deliciously scented grains when the batch would run out and watching him with admiring eyes as he would shout commands and ultimatums (she also remembered one in particular, where he had begged Pikachu to please just practice his agility, and proceeded to bribe him with an entire bottle of ketchup if he just "did the damn thing") and sometimes even participate in the battles himself. Back then she had told herself it was for Brock's sake–hadn't she brewed the coffee, Ash surely would have awoken Brock and made him do it–he was, after all, the designated cook. But she knew better all along that it was a selfish deed committed. She just wanted personal time with him, even if personal time meant meeting his constant need for energy and not really being personal with one another at all.

Misty shook herself from the memory, remembering the time, the place, the situation. Examining the employee's turned back, she noticed the detail in the chestnut hair, the neat spikes beginning from the occipital bone on, and ending in a forward-directioned bang. She could see the ropes of muscle in his arm, and though meatier than the last time she saw him, she definitely now recognized him.

"Gary?" she asked cautiously.

He leapt at her voice, nearly dumping a bag of premium roast onto the ground.

"Who the hell–" he began, but was silenced as he turned around and recognition painted his expression. He took in first her hair, which she grimaced at recalling that he used to call her "Red" because of it, then her face, then her body, then back up again.

"Well if it isn't Red," he said, crossing his arms in front of him and beaming a grin. For once Misty didn't flinch at the name, distracted by his seemingly pure _joy_ to see her.

"Hey Gary," she said sheepishly now, her right hand fiddling with her left forearm, "It _has_ been a while, hasn't it?"

"Hell yeah it has! I haven't seen you in...what? Over a year, I think!" His eyes widened as he said this aloud. Misty guessed he had never thought about the actual frame of time of everything before. Lucky him.

"That sounds about right," she said with a slight giggle, smiling back at his charisma.

"God Red, you gotta at least stay in touch," he paused for a quick second to flex his newly formed arms, "Men like me don't really like to be the ones to chase girls, we let the gals come to _us_."

"Oh _God_, you haven't changed Gary Oak. If you're doing that to all your customers you better watch it, because, personally, I just lost any appetite I had before for coffee."

Gary made a cocky grin.

"Yeah right, I know you're pining for me underneath that facade you have going on."

Misty rolled her eyes.

"Give it a break, prettyboy."

Gary just stuck his tongue out playfully.

"So how much for a cup of french vanilla?" she asked, pulling her backpack from her shoulder and delving into the pockets, feeling around for change.

Gary turned and filled up a cup, handing her a handful of creams and sugars.

"Special hottie discount. It's on the house," he winked and chuckled.

Misty found herself again rolling her eyes. She took the creams and sugars, putting in a considerable amount of sugar with only two creams. When she was about to reach for the cap, realizing there was none given to her, she looked up, only to be greeted by a can of whipped cream downcast and clouding her coffee in a white whirl to the top, instantly proceeded by a cap being shoved on afterward.

"Ah ah ah! No objections, that's for later," Gary said as he put the whipped cream back into the mini fridge located under the counter.

"You are such a pain in the ass sometimes, Gary," Misty stuck her hip out and put her hand on it in a condescending manner while stifling yet another giggle.

"But you love it," he shrugged, and walked out from behind the counter with her as she sat at one of the closest tables to the counter. He followed suit, sitting across from her.

"So, how's life been Red? An entire year. You gotta have updates."

"Life's been..."–at the exact moment she wanted to stab herself for hesitating–"decent."

_A simple "good" would've been good enough. But _no_, Misty just has to whine and bitch about everything!_

"Decent, eh?" Gary scoffed, "Doesn't sound too exciting."

"Well, you know, I've been helping out my sisters with the gym a lot. It's been keeping me busy."

"_Hmm_," Gary clicked off softly. She could tell he didn't believe her.

When she said nothing, he continued, "Got a boyfriend? I know you have to. I mean, _look _atchya," he said, his eyes openly and not too discretely roaming over her body, hair, and face.

"No...no, I don't," she said, her tone again sheepish.

Gary looked at her skeptically, dubiousness shading his face.

"Well then...you got a girlfriend?"

"What? No!" Misty flushed at the unexpected question and raised her hands in front of her defensively.

"There's nothin' wrong with that Red. Some guys actually enjoy that stuff," he arched an eyebrow playfully and looked at her.

"No! I just don't have a boyfriend because"–because what? The boy who really owns your heart hasn't spoken to you in a year?–"I can't really concentrate on any of that right now. I have the gym, my sisters, the trainers who come in for badges...." she trailed off after ticking the three lame excuses off on her fingers.

"How the hell can your sisters, who are clearly missing an important chunk of brain cells, manage to do it and yet _you_ can't?"

Misty shrugged. Sarcastic wit again lost the race to appear in time. "Dunno," she said simply.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I'll drop it. I'm just givin' you a hard time, I guess," he said, smiling now.

"So...what about _you_? I must say, I could never see you working anywhere aside from your grandpa's lab. What's this about?" her hand carved a little circle through the air as she gestured around the coffee shop.

Gary tipped back in his seat, crossing his legs and balancing them on the little table between them, his arms folded behind his head, all the while sharing his mutual confusion through a hissed grunt. His confusion, however, was drawn from displeasure–she could see that clearly in the furrowed brow and the slight twitch his lips gave when the subject was changed to his unusual career.

"Gotta pay off college," he replied almost as simply as Misty had when asked if she had a boyfriend.

"College? But...your grandpa's _got_ to bring in a shit load of money annually. Why do you have to pay it off?"

Gary sighed, "He said something like 'Har har har Gury! You muzt lurn respect aund respaunsibility!'"

Misty laughed at his impression of Samuel Oak. He broke into a series of wheezing coughs at the end of it, over-exaggerating the old Oak's age, making it sound as if he was at least eighty and had miraculously survived an intense bout of bronchitis.

When Misty's giggle died down, Gary continued, "Yep, that's as basic as it gets. I don't even know if I even want to go to college. I heard the Alakazam Academy up in Lavender Town was nice, and I guess I _kinda_ am considering it...but, eh, I still dunno."His brow again furrowed at whatever was running laps through his mind.

"You should definitely apply if you have a chance! And, uh, since you _obviously_ have a chance, that means you should. I mean, come on, Samuel Fuckin' Oak is your grandfather! There's no way you could even get rejected unless they wanted their school to look _real_ bad," Misty applied a sour face at the end to really put emphasis on it. Any school rejecting Samuel Oak's descendant would be crazy! Especially since Professor Oak was a world-renowned scientist, so famous that money could almost be smelled on his _breath_. Nope, no way Gary would get rejected, no matter where he happened to apply. Any school would gladly nurture him into their loving and greedy arms.

Gary nodded softly, his eyes looking vacant, "Yup. But, here's the catch: I want to make a name for myself, not to forever live in Gramps' shadow. I mean, yeah, Gramps is a real good guy. And, I mean, a _real good guy_. _You_ know, you've obviously met him. I just don't wanna live my life being 'Samuel Oak's Grandson' instead of being me, Gary Oak. Ya know?"

He tilted back into the table, sitting normal once more. His elbows were on the surface now, and his hands supported his weakly shaking head. His chestnut hair waved in the breeze created by his movements, and when Misty looked through the shiny surface of the table into his downcast face, there was a frown set upon his lips.

Gary looked distraught, confidence for once swiped from his posture and the arrogant shine stolen from his darker than usual eyes.

_Woah. Gary Oak actually upset about something. Who would've ever guessed that to be possible?_

"I'm sure you will make your own name, Gary. I have full confidence in that cocky head of yours. And, trust me, I'm good at this whole telling-who's-gonna-make-it-in-life thing. Just look at my sisters, I knew from the start they were ab-so-lute-ly _doomed_," Misty smiled, touching her fingertips to his arm for comfort. She saw his lips turn up or a second, but before she could see the rest of his response, she felt her back pocket buzz, and instinctively reached for her phone, pulling it out and flipping it open.

"Hello?" Misty answered, realizing that she hadn't looked at the Caller ID beforehand in her haste.

"Hi Misty. Just checking on you real quick to make sure you're on your way...?" Misty heard Delia's voice, all motherly and cautious and warmly comforting.

"Yeah, I'm on my way. I'm in Viridian now, but–" Misty pulled her face from her cell phone and read the digital clock on it. 5:32. How did she manage to burn so much time?–"I'm not sure I'll make it there by nightfall. I'll sleep at the Pokemon Center here if I can't find a ride, but I'm definitely gonna be there tomorrow, don't worry."

"I could come and get you if you'd like," Delia piped, a strange kind of hopeful beat charged up into her tone. Misty liked that, the fact that Mrs. Ketchum seemed to favor her. She smiled to herself gently.

Misty definitely considered it, but then thought of how many others Delia still needed to call, how many things were on her to-do list for the party the next day. Sure, Misty could certainly speed up the whole preparation process, but a two-hour ride to Viridian would have to precede the whole ordeal, and that could definitely sacrifice a few things that needed to be completed by tonight.

"No...," Misty finally decided, "No, don't worry about it Mrs. Ketchum. I'll see you tomorrow though, if I'm going to the Pokemon Center I should go snag a comfy seat now before other trainers get all the good ones. I'll call you tomorrow when I'm on my way."

Delia hesitated on the other line, no doubt questioning the safety of sleeping in a Pokemon Center, especially in such an urban place like Viridian City. If only she had known how many times her own son had done it himself.

"Alright sweety, but if you need me or if anything happens, just call me, okay?"

"Okay Mrs. Ketchum, will do." Misty agreed affirmatively.

"Bye now, and be safe!" Mrs. Ketchum replied quickly into the receiver before Misty hung up.

"See you soon," Misty giggled softly, snapping her phone shut.

Gary emitted a chuckle once the conversation was over.

"Ahah, so you're going to Ketchum's party too?" he asked, his exclamatory sarcasm suddenly back.

"Yup," Misty bobbed her head in a nod.

"And you got nowhere to sleep tonight unless you hop in some weirdo's car to catch a ride to Pallet?" he pushed.

"Pretty much."

"Sleep at my apartment."

"What?" she snorted, standing up abruptly from the table, placing both of her hands on the soft curves of her hips and leaning across the table. She was less than two feet away from him, but she had to get her point across, "Sorry Gary, I'll pass. I'm not really into _that_ type of thing."

"You're not into one-night stands either?" Gary said through a chortle to clarify what she meant by '_that type of thing'_.

Misty made a disgusted look at the boy and began walking to the door from the small table they were stationed at. Gary was by her side in an instant, clutching at her shoulder.

"Wait, I wasn't serious. We can have a slumber party. Pillow fights. Popcorn and chick flicks. You know, that type of lame stuff that women really seem to love for some reason."

Misty swiveled on her heel, completely astounded by Gary's rushed sentence.

Did he _really_ just say that?

Misty squinted her eyes at him skeptically.

"And you won't try any perverted stuff?" she said, her tone serious, her finger jabbing into his chest in emphasis.

Gary held his hands up into the air as if to say he was innocent.

"None. Swear on my sex life. That's a pretty serious thing right there, Red."

"_Seriously _Gary. None! None at all!" Misty said, poking her finger into his diaphragm progressively harder with every word.

"Okay, okay, none! Just stop that, it hurts," he said wearily, rubbing at his chest with a hand he brought down from the defensive stance.

Misty pulled her finger back and folded her arms into her waist. She looked down at the floor, pretending to be in deep concentration. When she brought her eyes back up to his there was some sort of new sparkle in them, she felt it. But her lips remained in a pursed line.

"On one condition." she bargained.

"Shoot," Gary said timidly.

"Switch those chick flicks to zombie movies and that popcorn to ice cream and we've got ourselves a sleep over."

Gary emitted a mellifluous chime of laughter and agreed, "It's a done deal, Red."

Misty felt herself break out into the first genuine smile she'd experienced in an entire year. And oh, did it feel good.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**two quick things. ;)**

**a) i would definitely like to give out a huuuge snorlax-sized thanks to those who review this story. you guys really keep me going, and i find myself rereading your comments almost daily to continue writing this. reviews keep me going, so keep 'em coming, good, bad, long, short, criticizing or complimenting, whatever! anything at all, seriously!**

**and...**

**b) i've made an internal deadline in my head for each chapter. i'm going to try to update every ten days or less...is this too much? i don't really keep track of other people's updates...so let me know the situation on that.**

**thanks again my loves.**

**xoxo**


	4. Chapter 4

**disclaimer: i don't own pokemon!**

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Misty stood next to Gary, holding two ice cream cones, one spiraled high with a french vanilla flavor and the other cookie dough. As she absently licked at the cookie dough flavored one, she heard the gentle metallic jingle of Gary sorting through his key ring, fumbling for the correct key. A soft string of swears wove through the key chimes.

"What the hell are all those keys for? To make you look important?" Misty questioned through a clump of half-chewed cookie mush.

"Wow Red, you _want_ to sleep at the Pokemon Center, dontchya?" Gary chuckled darkly.

Misty snorted.

"Is that supposed to be a threat? _You're_ the one that asked _me_ to sleep here. Just to remind you," Misty paused for a minute, thinking, and then added, "You're not a janitor, are you? That could explain the keys I guess. But–" she snorted dramatically–"that'd mean having two jobs. You're way too lazy to even manage the one you have."

That was a stab at him closing the shop early for her. She had helped Gary clean up the little coffee brewery while trying to convince him that she was perfectly content and they could leave once his shift was over, but he denied at once, his voice jumpy and his actions swift from eagerness. Misty had assumed he was eager because he had an excuse to ditch work early, but upon thinking about it, she wasn't sure if it was that or because the excuse was her. Either way, the little coffee shop was abandoned early despite Misty's stubborn refusals.

The door they now stood in front of was a glossy mahogany. Highly intricate, antique-styled ferns swirled their way up through the doors design and a brass door knob, cold-looking in its sudden blunt nature, stood alone on the right side, a keyhole etched into its surface.

_Pretty ritzy, _Misty had thought when she had first seen it only three minutes before.

In fact, from what Misty had seen since she had arrived at Gary's apartment complex, that's how the entire building was–luxurious, but completely unnecessary. They had parked in a very lonely parking lot, consisting of only five other cars besides Gary's, all equally or–dare she say it–better in appearance than his precious red convertible. She had carefully balanced her ice cream cone and thermos in one hand while she threw her bag over her shoulder and had quickly ran to catch up to Gary. The building itself was a deep mauve (Misty had laughed at him for this, to which Gary had kindly responded with a raised middle finger thrown back at her from over his shoulder) and had a wrap-around porch encircling its body. It was adorned with cutesy little white shutters, and the upstairs apartments were gifted with individual patios which could only be accessed by going through those individuals' rooms. Windows of various shapes and sizes decorated the exterior of the house, some occupants even lucky enough to have massive, semicircle-shaped ones that must have taken up an entire wall inside their actual room. Vines twisted and clung to the outer woodwork, clumps of clematis, vibrant in their ripe amethyst hue, very nearly falling off from the barely-attached curls of vine. Misty had to bite down on her tongue to stifle a gasp. The place was beautiful. And Misty could hardly contain herself when they had walked up a flight of stairs, which meant he had a patio all to himself.

_Lucky bastard_, was the exact phrase that ran bitterly through her mind.

Misty heard a soft _click_ and Gary threw a quirky smile at her as he rotated the door handle, pushing it open.

The apartment wasn't huge, but it definitely wasn't small either. He held the door open for her and she stepped inside, switching which hands the ice cream cones were in and dropped her bag beside her as she slipped off her shoes. On her right, rays of moonlight flooded in through the crystal backdoor,–which she understood would lead to his personal patio–scattering glimmering little rainbows off the elaborately carved glass. Right beside the door to the right was a big screen television and a white couch positioned six or seven feet away facing it. On the left side of the room was a tiny kitchen which was only disconnected from the living room by a tiny half-wall divider, and through the space the wall didn't hide Misty could see a refrigerator, a counter, a sink, a partial stove...and then her vision got cut off abruptly from the subdivide. Straight in front of her was an archway which contained an ajar door. The light was on in this room, and she could tell right away that it was a bathroom from its shining purity–everything was white, from the tiles to the walls to the toilet to the shower curtain. There was one more door, to the right of the bathroom door, but it was closed. Misty assumed this was Gary's room. It seemed as though shelves filled in all the empty spaces a wall could possibly provide, filled with collections of books and movies and Pokemon trinkets and everything else in between.

Gary had stepped away a few feet to turn on the light, and when it turned on in its harsh wrath, Misty was shocked to see that he actually kept his home _clean_. When Misty imagined any male teenager living on their own, she pictured their surroundings being an utter destruction site–clothes thrown this and that way, pizza boxes stained with splotches of grease and used, soggy tissues littering the floor, rotten food fermenting on dirty dishes that were left to decompose on a kitchen table or a shelf...but no, nothing in there was like that at all. She quickly cast her vision downwards and was shocked even further to see that he even swept; she couldn't find a single stray hair on the white-carpeted floors–not even a _stain_.

"Wow," Misty found herself saying before she could control herself.

"Yup. No more cracks about my career now, 'kay?"

Misty snapped her eyes back from her sweeping investigation, placing them on his dark brown eyes.

"No promises," she said simply, a note of sarcasm on her tongue.

Gary just laughed again, and stepped over to one of the shelves, running a long pointer finger through horizontal rows of DVDs until he found whatever he was looking for. He pulled it out and held it up, waving it at her.

"_Night of the Living Dead_!" she exclaimed, immediately recognizing the cover, "You're not bad at this host thing Gary. I'm surprised," she said, grinning.

He walked over to her and retrieved his ice cream cone, a mutual smile on his lips.

"So I've been told," he said, his smile twisting into a mischievous grin as he took a lick off of his ice cream cone.

Misty rolled her eyes, "Save your Hustler act for another night. We have an agreement."

"Killjoy," Gary muttered, pursing his lips.

An hour later they were both sitting on opposite hemispheres of Gary's white couch, ice cream completely finished off and lights off once more. Gary sat at the very edge of the couch with his elbows propped on his knees, leaning into the television, his brown eyes glassy and wide. Misty could almost watch the movie through those orbs, they were so mirror-like and so very absorbed in the movie. She, on the other hand, sat inside the curve of the couch, hugging her knees to her chest as her eyes languidly flicked between the screen and Gary. Eventually deciding that Gary had never seen the movie himself, just owned it for years without getting around to really viewing it, her eyes flickered back to the screen until Duane Jones was successfully killed off and his body burned. Her eyes returned to Gary once more as the credits rolled down the screen in paragraphs.

Gary's mouth was slightly ajar, his eyes somehow even wider than when the characters Tom and Judy had died in a combusting truck. Misty had almost laughed out loud at the expression on his face then, but now, his eyes were peeled even further back, possibly at the furthest possible extent at which they could be open.

Finally, he spoke.

"You like some fucked up movies, Red."

She couldn't hold it in anymore, a fresh bucket of giggles pouring from her.

"You–you-ouuu w-were so–s–_so–_," Misty said between gusts of laughter, "_scared!_"

"Was not," he said simply, brushing a hand through the air in dismissal of her accusation.

Her giggles died down a bit, and she clutched at the sudden pain in her ribs that was a result of her bout of laughter.

"Come _on_ Gary, I'm surprised you didn't pee your pants, honestly."

He shrugged, going for the non-caring cool kid approach, saying nonchalantly, "Whatever. It was a good movie though."

Misty beamed a smile at him belonging to a five-year-old who just won a lifetime supply of bubble gum, "I know."

Gary allowed his muscles and back to relax slightly as he leaned back into the couch, draping one arm over the length of the frame. Misty examined him further then in his distraction, taking in once more just how much he had grown up since the last time she had seen him. His jaw had definitely sharpened, masculine and jutted in its shape; his cheeks, however, still had a bit of baby flesh to lose–though they were slightly carven in the upper apples, his face shape retained a childish, almost cherubic quality to it in its oval shape. His eyes were a harsher version than the set she had secretly memorized throughout the years: they were a brooding russet, and unlike Ash's so visible twinkle, you had to narrowly search his eyes to detect even a shimmer. They were a mile-deep in depth, and looking at them was like looking through a telescope backwards–they just sucked you in.

He glanced at her then and Misty blushed from being caught in her stare.

He brushed the hand that wasn't wrapped on the couch through his hair, a cocky smile setting across his lips, "It's alright to stare. I mean, it's understandable."

Misty furrowed her brows at him and set her mouth in a straight line, her blush intensifying.

"You're so full of yourself Gary Oak. Really."

He just laughed in response.

A minute passed in silence, the credits still meandering down the screen and Misty's furious blush dissipating, when Gary spoke.

"Hey Misty" he said with excitement, turning to her suddenly, the usually undetectable glint sharpening devilishly in his eyes, "Truth or dare?". He had taken his arm off the couch and brought it forward with his other as he leaned into them, bringing him closer to her by a foot.

Misty squinted her eyes in skepticism, turquoise penetrating dark chocolate.

"Truth."

"_Tch_," Gary verbalized, "Wimp."

Misty shrugged, "Not necessarily. If you play the game right you _can_ get some good information out of me."

She immediately regretted her words and averted her eyes from his as they turned even more diabolic at that information. Shrinking into the couch, she braced herself for whatever he might ask.

"Okay...," he trailed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him bring a finger up to his jaw in thought.

"Are you a virgin?"

Misty rolled her eyes and began, "Gary, you're–"

"Nope!" he cut into her sentence, "It's truth or dare. You gotta answer."

"_Ugh_," she groaned in irritation.

"I knew it."

She brought her eyes to him again, the corners of her mouth tipped down in anger.

"Knew _what_?" she snapped at him.

"That you're not." he said, his tone soaked in victory at whatever discovery he figured he'd made.

"It's none of your business whether I am or _not_," she said, separating each word slowly to clarify. Venom rolled off her tongue with every syllable harshly.

"So you're not."

He was openly smiling now in some sort of giddy triumph. Misty felt the heat rise to her cheeks once more in a blood-cooking frustration. She came out of her physically defensive state, unhugging her knees and turning her body to him, crossing her knees Indian-style.

"_It's none of your business,_" Misty said, louder and more slowly, an angrier edge to each word.

"But it's truth or dare, for one. And for two, you're not," he said, all smiles and rainbows in his confident manner.

Misty wondered in some back part of her mind if smoke was coming from her yet. Her cheeks felt red-hot and she bore her teeth slightly against her will. His confidence pissed her off–especially when he was so confidently _wrong_.

"How would _you_ know?" she spat.

He tipped his head inwards and curled his upper lip up, as if to say "duh".

"You went _everywhere_ with Ketchum,", he said, " It was _obvious_ you guys had _something_ goin' on," Gary snickered at the end of it, implying that the very idea that they didn't have any type of relationship was absurd.

Misty brought her knees up to her chest once more and leaned her head on them, facing her gaze on the wall opposite Gary, breaking their stare.

"That's stupid," she muttered.

"Is it?"

It was more of a condescending "I win" than an actual question.

"Yeah," Misty replied, trying to make the word as scissor-like as possible, drenching it with satire as if to insult his intelligence.

"_Yeah_? So..._yeah_ you're a virgin or _yeah_ the idea of you and Ash dating is stupid?"

A razor-bladed huff came from her throat in defeat.

"Both," she finally admitted, squishing her eyes shut as if somehow it would help lessen her hearing. She didn't want to hear whatever asshole thing he had to say back to that.

"You're lying. You can't lie in truth or dare, Red."

Misty turned to him once more, anger reignited, "I finally give you an answer and you fucking accuse me of lying?"

There was a short silent break.

"...So then you _are _a virgin?" he asked incredulously.

"YES," Misty yelled, turning back to him and throwing her arms out in annoyance.

"And...," he said, eyes wide from the breakthrough in information, "You and Ketchum _didn't_ have anything going on?"

Misty honestly didn't know how to reply to that one. Particularly because she didn't really know the answer herself.

"I...I don't really think so...?" she answered slowly. She felt an odd, sharp obstruction pinch into her heart at her admitted words. No, they didn't "have a thing going on". They never did. She questioned whether or not to take into account the fact that she carried an ever-existent love for him–until she decided that two joint feelings from two people were required to "have a thing going on". But because she was the only one who felt anything, she didn't bother taking it into consideration.

Gary didn't need to know that, anyways.

He was staring at her, his face for once gentle and the snide sneer that was usually there absent.

"You don't sound real certain of that," he said, not accusingly or pryingly...he almost sounded understanding, nudging her on with a feather instead of a prod.

Misty shrugged. She didn't want to continue the conversation. Something in her was churning darkly in a potentially devastating hunger. The walls she spent an entire year carefully gluing and sculpting and stapling felt like they were being slashed at, her numbness retreating and emotion slowly replacing it. Misty had noticed it earlier in the day–the skip in her step, the emphatic strut, even the elegant edge in her wrist as she held her ice cream cone–she never even _knew_ she had held ice cream in any specific manner until now. Her blushes, her sarcastic wit, her sighs and frowns and smiles–all back within a day. She was starting to feel passion come back to her, fear, anger, joy...all of which had been absent from her soul for forever...or so it felt. She could feel the embers of a feisty zest burning in her, the need to dance, the need to fight, the need to cry...all of it was rushing back to her, the emotions she'd blocked out so many months earlier.

She wasn't sure yet if it was a good or bad thing. It certainly had felt good earlier when she had joked with and teased and had just been happy with Gary...but now she was even more apprehensive about seeing Ash, especially now that she was certain sorrow and rage had too returned. Hadn't her emotions returned to her, she could have remained an empty shell, devoid of feelings or responses, a void that emitted a rather evident message to stay away. But now...what if Ash actually _did_ talk to her? Started a conversation? Hugged her?

She wasn't sure if she could handle the latter. Upon thinking about possible upcoming events once more, she really wasn't sure if she could handle even seeing him. Him. _Ash_. Her stomach knotted at the thought of him as butterflies searched violently for an exit, ripping and scratching in their haste.

_Butterflies_. She had forgotten what those had felt like, too...and she was quickly reminded that she had absolutely hated them as heat rose to her cheeks and a sensation to vomit tore at her esophagus.

"I'm not sure of it at all," Misty finally choked out in response to Gary.

"Well...," Gary said, still soft in his demeanor, "Did you guys ever kiss?"

Misty was going to try to lie, to try and pretend she forgot about the last time she had ever seen Ash, but she knew she couldn't. She was once good at lying and at controlling emotion from tainting her face, for an entire year, actually. But now that her soul was being polished and resurfacing once more, she wasn't sure lying would be as effective as it once was. No, her face would give her away in a minute.

"_Uhh_...," she began lamely, clearing her throat and attempting to configure a comprehensive response quickly in her head, "Well...I mean..._umm_...," –she sighed, beat– "Yeah...kinda...."

"Kinda?" Gary asked, "There's no 'kinda' in these situations. It's a yes or no, A or B, true or false."

"Yes. A. True."

"Then you had a thing," Gary stated conclusively.

Misty looked at him.

"To have a thing, _both_ people need to feel a mutual likeness towards each other," she said finally.

Gary groaned.

"He kissed back, didn't he?"

Misty sucked in her lower lip, biting it nervously, before answering: "Yeah, but–"

"Ah!" he put a finger just in front of her lips to stop her, "Here's a better question. Who kissed who?"

Misty withdrew her thrown out arms, pulling them into her ribs. She put her full concentration into threading them together, retreating each finger individually, then threading them once more exactly six times before she answered.

"He kissed me."

_Should I even be telling him this?_

She wasn't sure just yet how much she trusted Gary.

"Then you _definitely_ had a thing. Unless it was _you_ who didn't kiss back."

Misty found the thought of she being the one to reject a being as perfect as Ash almost comical.

"...I did kiss back," Misty said, softly.

"Then, as I said before, you had a thing."

"It was a pity kiss," Misty rushed through her defending argument, her words splashing together frantically, "He didn't really like me. It had no meaning to him."

Gary rolled his eyes in seeming annoyance, "And I thought Ash was stubborn! _Ha! You_, on the other hand...," he sighed, slanting back into the couch comfortably, still facing her.

"How would _you_ know anything about the way Ash thinks? He could've done that to ten thousand other girls! I'm sure May and Dawn have gotten a _mouthful_ of him, and they've known him even shorter than I have," Misty's tone turned bitter towards the second half of her sentence. She realized immediately that her jealousy-caused spite for the two girls had unfortunately come out of hibernation.

"May...and Dawn?" Gary asked, confusion brimming on his voice and face. His brow was slightly furrowed and his lips turned down in incomprehension.

Misty looked at him in disbelief.

"_May_. And _Dawn_. M-A-Y. D-A-W-N. The two other girls he's traveled with. Am I ringing any bells yet?" she said sarcastically.

"Oh," Gary said, then as the light bulb visibly flicked on, "OH. I remember them now! But God, no way. He never even talked about them, maybe twice in passing. But you..._ugh_, I could write a friggin' novel from how much shit Ketchum has said about you. He was like a lovesick little puppy, his eyes would get all sparkly and he would smile before he even said anything about you. That was always my cue to turn the radio up or change the subject before he got a chance to begin it," Gary winked at her as she frowned.

"He talked about me?"

Gary nodded furiously as he said, "_Ohhh_ yeah. Too much, if ya ask me. Kid was head over heels, though he obviously hid it well."

Misty felt as if she had steel wool in her throat. Her mouth was dry and felt sand-filled as she tried to painfully swallow down whatever lump had lodged its way there.

_Head over heels?_

...for _her?_

She was quiet for a few minutes. A sheen of what she believed to be tears glassed over her eyes, and she had to concentrate extremely hard to prevent any more from puddling into the reservoir. Misty didn't even know why she was almost crying. Was it because of the irony? The regret? The realization that she and Ash did, as Gary phrased it, "have a thing"? Was it because she took his supposed emotions and had unknowingly threw them on the grating curb of the street they had last held one another on? Because, in Ash's eyes, it was _she_ that walked away from _him_?

"I'm tired. I think I'll sleep now," Misty said, her eyes unfocused and her voice robotic in her preoccupancy to not let Gary see her cry. She was such a baby. She hated it.

Gary was examining her now, his brows pulled together, but he remained silent as he went to his room and returned to her with a blanket and pillow in hand. He dropped it beside her on the space he had sat no less than a minute ago and said softly, "Alright, I gotchya."

When she muttered a thank you and made to grab her bag, Gary continued, "You know, if you wanna talk, I'm here all night," he said through a chuckle at the last bit, "But you know that. Just knock on my door. You know I do love ya Red, as a friend, and I'm here for you if you want to talk or just need a hug or something."

"And I appreciate you tons for that Gary. Really. But I just need sleep now, I'll be alright by morning. I just have a lot on my mind I guess," it took a lot for her to muster up that sentence without letting a quiver run into her voice. She swallowed it down hurriedly.

Misty smiled gently up at him, and Gary returned it, touching a gentle hand to her arm.

"Night Mist."

That nickname.

Evacuate.

_Now_.

"Goodnight Gary," she said, turning her body to hide her face in case any tears accidentally fell.

She could feel his eyes on her back, but didn't turn around to meet his gaze. Eventually he left, switching off the light for her. Misty laid down on the couch, the blanket wrapped around her snugly. Nuzzling her face into the pillow, she was comforted solely by the scent that clung there of Gary's hair. It was masculine and fresh and arboreous, and it lulled her slowly but surely to sleep as she breathed it in through a tear-clogged nose.

* * *

Misty awoke the next day by the twinkling rainbows that softly danced across her face, and, opening her eyes, she remembered they came from Gary's crystalline patio door. She stretched her back, reaching her hands to the ceiling and arching her back in a yawn. Standing slowly, she meandered through the living room to the back door, tracing her hands along the ridges of carved crystal. Her hand met the handle, and she turned it slowly in case the door emitted some sort of unnecessary concert of creaks. It kept quiet though, and she stepped through onto the patio, shutting the door behind her. The September air hit her cuttingly, a frigid breeze sparking up the hair on the back of her neck. It seemed to swirl around her for a minute in a sudden investigation to see who was invading its immaculately fresh atmosphere before it swept off in another direction. Hugging her arms to her, she stepped to the edge and leaned against the wooden railing, breathing in the autumn air, letting it arctically recycle through her lungs. A few sighs from the wind stole three or four locks of her hair, twirling the flaming ruby past her porcelain-like face.

She nearly jumped out of her own skin when she felt a cup against her hand. Swirling on her heel, she was greeted by a disheveled, half awake Gary, two cups of coffee in his hand, one withdrawn from her and his eyes wide from her swift movement.

He cleared his throat.

"Uh," he said, his voice crackling and croaking in fatigue, "I brought you some coffee. Figure you'd need it. I know I do."

Misty graciously took the cup from his hand, sipping at beverage, feeling it unthaw her chest as she swallowed. It was extra sugary and barely creamy.

Surprised, she looked at him, saying, "Hey...you made my coffee pretty decently, Hustler."

Gary smiled–it was apparently much too early to laugh–and said, "I do pay attention, ya know."

She looked at him, the confused look pushing him on to say: "Yesterday, at _Brewed Awakenings. _You got a coffee. I watched you put in creams and sugars. Remember?"

Her heart secretly melted a bit at that. Ash had never memorized her coffee-drinking-patterns. Hadn't it been Gary that she was talking to she probably would've _aww_ed out loud. But she instead took the approach she knew best.

"I knew you were creeping on me," Misty said, smiling at him slyly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Gary returned the grin as he sipped at his coffee delicately.

The two stood there, leaning against the decks wood, quiet in the pumpkin-ed breeze of autumn for nearly a half an hour before Gary led her inside, showing her how to work his shower and what shampoos to use. She showered quickly, scrubbing her head with a boyish-scented soap and let the hot streams of water unknot her back and shoulder and neck.

After she was dressed in a snug, yellow long-sleeved shirt and a jean skirt splattered with bleach marks and tears and shreds, she let the bathtub fill half way with a lukewarm water and pulled three Pokeballs from her bag. She watched the scarlet beams from each one as they shot towards the bathtub, unleashing first Horsea, then Goldeen, and last but certainly not least, Staryu.

"You guys have been stuck in there for so long," Misty whispered to them, her voice soaked in a mix of sorrow and sympathy as she pet Staryu's edge, "I'm sorry, I've just been busy I guess. No more lengthy breaks, I promise."

She rotated from Staryu's arm to the back of Horsea's neck to the top of Goldeen's head, scratching favorably behind the horn, smiling as Goldeen cooed lovingly.

"I have to finish getting ready, though. I'm sorry," Misty apologized once more, a frown pursing her pink lips, "But you guys can still play for a bit while I finish up."

All three uttered soft cries of what sounded like sadness, and Misty felt her heart tug painfully as she looked at their downcast eyes. She ran a hand through them once more, repeating, "I'm really sorry. I am."

Misty spent extra long straightening her hair for her Pokemons' sake, smoothing through every curl and crimp and expelling any trace of barely-there frizz. She spent even longer on her make-up, swiping mascara through her long lashes and sweeping different shades of brown on each lid, and finally she laid a small layer of a peach blush on her apples and a clear coat of brown-sugar-scented lip gloss on her lips. She sprayed herself with the perfume she had forever been in favor of since perhaps the age of fourteen or so, and gave herself one last self examination in the mirror. Feeling satisfied, she turned back to her Pokemon, smiling softly at them as they splashed and sang and swam.

"Alright guys...we gotta go. I'll try to let you out tonight, okay?"

Horsea sang a treble noted cry of appreciation, Goldeen glubbed a suave "_Goldeen_", and Staryu just gave her an affirmative "Hai-ya!".

Misty put them each into their Pokeballs, kissing each on their forehead–for Staryu, a kiss on its fuchsia jewel was instead given–and placed the Pokeballs into her bag lightly, whispering once more another apology through the ruby and ivory spheres. She pulled her bag over her shoulder and switched off the light in the bathroom.

Misty was a bit stunned to see how nicely Gary cleaned up. Perhaps it was because the only recent image she had to compare him to was him in that awful maroon work uniform, disheveled and stressed, his hair creased from the cap he had to wear into work. He was now laying on the blanched couch looking admittedly handsome, his hair in clumped, barely-airborne spikes, wearing a green and white flannel unbuttoned to reveal a white undershirt and a pair of plain blue jeans. She could smell the woodsy scent on him of his cologne–the same one that had clung to his pillow–except much more strong in potency. She sucked in a savoring breath of it before she sat on the arm of the couch that he was leaning on. Gary was watching some strange wildlife show featuring what she supposed was the host nearing himself to a Hippowdon, stating facts about the animal in an Australian accent before the Hippowdon whipped up a grating sandstorm. The camera lense, in a panicked frenzy, switched to face this direction and that, searching for the host, before the program cut into a rainbow of boxes and the only noise heard was a monotone _beeeeeep_.

Gary leaned up and pointed the remote at the television, shutting it off. The TV sizzled for a few minutes as the electricity sparked out of it, progressively quieter, until there was no sound but their own hushed breathing.

Chuckling finally, he said, "I think that's our cue."

He stood and stretched while facing his crystal back door.

Misty stood as well, digging her pale ocher canvas shoes from her bag, and pulled them on. When she faced Gary once more he was very openly examining her, his eyes drifting up and down her body. Feeling suddenly self conscious, she crossed her arms fragilely over stomach.

Gary dog-whistled at her before he snickered and said, "Lookin' good, Red."

Misty blushed and swore at herself mentally for doing so before she said, "I could say the same for you. You clean up pretty nicely for a regular grease-ball."

She stuck her tongue out playfully as he pushed out a quivering bottom lip.

"Grease-ball?" he said, his voice drenched in a false grief.

"Oh shut up, you know I'm kidding," Misty said. His puppy dog pout immediately disappeared and was replaced with a snide smile.

"I know," he said, his omnipotent cockiness once again back.

She snorted and began a slow clap on her tiny hands, saying, "That was truly academy-award winning. Really."

Gary snickered while he pulled his keys from his pocket, swinging them noisily around his pointer finger, "You ready?"

Misty let out a sigh and said softly, "Yeah...I think I am."

"Alrighty then, let's go," Gary said, catching the swinging keys in his grip. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her to the door, he added in, "Talk to him, 'kay?"

Misty was a little shocked–by both the gesture and what he said, but she agreed to do so in a nod. His arm around her surprisingly didn't feel strange, it felt comforting and nice to her. She wasn't repulsed or aching to rip it from her shoulder. It made her feel as if no matter what she did tonight, whether it be talk to Ash or not talk to him or ignore him or fight with him or anything at all, she had support in doing so.

Misty leaned her head into his neck and whispered a gracious, "Thank you."

He squeezed at her shoulder snugly and said, "That's what I'm here for, Red."

She felt his jaw tense slightly in a little smile against her nuzzled-in head, and she sighed, never before expecting to feel so thankful for Gary Oak.

* * *

**askasldkjasldjask AGH!**

**sorry the end is kind of rushed, but tonight is the only night i've had a laptop charger all week! mine broke and i don't know when i'm going to get a new one, currently i'm broke and i'm assuming they cost around forty bucks or so. which sucks. i also intended to make this the chapter that misty FINALLY saw ash...but then my laptop died everywhere so i couldn't type, and i wanted to get a chapter up, since it's already been ten days. plus i also don't know when i'll be able to get my hands on a computer again to even put up a new chapter. so here it is.**

**hopefulllllly i'll have it in ten days or less...but i just don't know.**

**sorry in advance if it takes forever to update. blah blah blah.... :/**

**P.S. reviews will motivate me, even if it means frantically writing down chapters on napkins with a broken pencil. D;**

**xoxo**


	5. Chapter 5

**woah, okay, so i just reread all the uploaded chapters off of this site, just to learn two things:**

**1] my writing seems like it's deteriorating throughout this story. like...in my own, honest opinion, the last chapter just made me sound passionless, dry, rushed, and clumsy. but i promise that's not what's happening! the last chapter, as explained at the end of it, was indeed rushed, but not because of lack of passion; more so because of lack of a chargeable laptop. so apologies go out for the lousy conclusion of the last addition. i might even rewrite it because it's so rushed, but i wanted to get a new chapter up while i had the chance. sorry again to whatever fans i might have collected thus far. [insert heart here] :)**

**AND....**

**2] i have fixed chapter two! for whatever reason, the site slaughtered it when i uploaded it, cutting short sentences and throwing them this way and that throughout the chapter. so if you want a more–legible? clarified?–version of that, you can re-read it now.**

**and that's all. i'll shut up now and let you read the new chapter.**

**disclaimer: i don't own pokemon!**

* * *

Misty felt the bass in Gary's red convertible pump like a titan's ancient heart underneath her little feet, which were folded daintily on his dashboard. Both shock and confusion had hit her when Gary had first rotated the volume knob and classical music had came drifting out of his speakers. She could not picture Gary being patient enough to listen to classical music. And yet here was the controverting proof sitting beside her in this luxurious sports car, simply radiating arrogance and cockiness and narcissism, his manner the total opposite of the music's. One particular song did manage to remarkably remind Misty of Gary, however. The tune had started off harsh and cacophonous, featuring numerous different baritone chords booming sharply; with every rolled out rumbling piano chord her feet nearly vibrated off of the dashboard entirely under the bass lines thunderous might. But then somehow the blistering music had shifted in its tone into a sweet little melody, raising at least two octaves and becoming very mellifluous and elegant in its demeanor. She remained uncertain as to why that song struck her so jaggedly, but nonetheless when the song was done she couldn't filter out the thought that told her that if Gary were to have his own theme song, _that_ would indeed be it.

Strings of sunlight trickled through the thickly-veined scarlet leaves of autumn, lighting them like lampshades and casting a ruby and citrine sheen across the yellowing grass, which was already littered with the mosaic of prematurely fallen foliage. Pidgey sang and cawed as they wove through the light wisps of ivory cloud, gallantly flying west for the upcoming winter. And yet the wind whipping past her in its bittersweet autumn perfume was dulled, the scenery in its vibrant coloring dimmed–not just because of the sunglasses she was wearing, no. Her world was still recollecting itself, digging itself up from its year-ridden grave whose cell walls had been colored solely with shades of a haunting gray. The rich chromaticity which was embedded in the glorious autumn landscape still seemed dreary to her, her mind not yet allowing her to take a paint brush and color everything bright and jubilant and _alive_.

Misty wondered for only a minute why she still felt so apathetic, but–who was she kidding?–she knew why. It was because of Ash. She knew some key part to her heart was missing, a part she had given to Ash the very day she had fished him from that river. Some type of closure between her and him was needed to retrieve that one missing portion, and as long as he had that, her world would always be one shade off from perfect _at best_.

If she spoke to Ash, if she ended everything–or if _he_ did, for that matter–would feeling come back to her? Color? Full-blown emotion? Ash held an important component that was vital for the proper function of her heart. If she could end whatever remained between her and Ash...could she get that back from him? Could her life return to what it once was, to the days where she was Ash-free and still somehow happy? That was nearly seven years ago.

_Seven years!_

Misty reveled at how long a period of time that was...but that just made the previous possibility of ending things with Ash seem less likely to work. She had Ash on her mind every single day for _seven years_. Could she adjust her life to be Ash-less? Or was she too used to him being there, whether it be in body or spirit? The doubt grew in its volume, becoming a deafening crack like something that would be emitted from a terrorizing earthquake.

Which then lead her to her next thought, and it was the darkest and frightening thought of all, churning monstrously and maliciously in the bowels of her thoughts: the possibility that perhaps Ash would _always_ have that remaining jigsaw piece to her heart, that no matter what she did, her world would always be incomplete, imperfect, and desolate without him by her side.

A brooding and bubbling fear enveloped her. If that was the case, then she couldn't end things, not if she ever wanted her life to even have a _chance_ of being alright once more.

And then she also had to factor in the ingredient which whispered quietly to the outskirts of her thoughts that she didn't want to end things between her and Ash, anyways. And as selfish as that was, she knew even if she could choke up the power to speak to him, she could never use that power to destroy whatever remained between them.

No. Closure was out of the question, and though her heart had screamed that at her since the start of her turmoil of thoughts, she now had a justified excuse to grasp it, so grasp it she did, if not with just a bit too much speed.

So then her remaining options were: to not speak to him at all and let that ghost of what she remembered of Ash that last night haunt her daily life, or to speak to him and salvage whatever friendship she could. If she was to be honest with herself she knew she hated both answers–either way, whichever one she chose, she'd still go back to being the _tomboy_, the _best friend_, or, the worst, _one of the guys_. She knew that if Ash in fact had felt anything more than friendship for her that she had foolishly wrecked it the last night they were together. And so, no matter what, she'd just resume being that hurting lovesick little girl.

_I give up_, Misty thought as she mentally forced herself to digress. She let a sigh sift through her lips in utter exhaustion.

All too soon the scent of sea salt laced into the air: an indication that they were in Pallet Town.

_At least if anything goes horribly wrong tonight I can just swim to Cinnabar Island_, Misty thought sarcastically to herself as she breathed in the illustrious ocean air, her tense muscles unknotting as the brine cycled through her lungs and ease settled cautiously into her limbs at the comforting smell.

"How're you feeling?"

Misty gasped and felt her heart multiply in its pace. She had nearly forgotten Gary was even beside her. She allowed her heart to slow before she answered.

"I'm not really sure. Indecisive, I guess," Misty shrugged, turning her face from the windshield to her window.

"Indecisive?" Gary questioned softly, "About what?"

She watched her lips as she spoke through the windows reflection: "Everything. About whether or not I should even talk to Ash. About whether or not it's a good thing I'm here. About what I'm going to say, if I'm going to say anything at all," she flicked her wrist casually, "All that jazz."

"You and I both know you have to talk to him. Even if it's not for your own sake, you're not the only one who needs closure, Red. He liked ya. A lot."

She felt her lungs crush upon themselves at the ending of that sentence...and then inflate in preparation to yell as she recollected the other message in what he said. Gary wanted her to end things with Ash.

"Closure?" Misty asked skeptically, trying her hardest not to let her anger flame into her cheeks. She knew she was not ending things. Or, rather, she simply couldn't.

"Yeah. So you both can move on with your lives."

He said it so casually, so easily. Cocky, cocky, _cocky_ Gary, always thinking he knew everything. She ground her jaw in irritation.

"What if I don't want closure?" Misty asked through gritted teeth.

Gary laughed.

_Arrogant asshole_.

"If you don't want closure, then what exactly is it that you want?" he asked, righteousness drenching his tone. There was something else there too, however. Was that...spite?

Misty grimaced at the idea of upsetting Gary–but what she had possibly done to do so completely escaped her. She couldn't have him mad at her, not tonight. She needed that invisible turret of support.

"That's what I'm unsure about," Misty said, more so to herself than to Gary.

Gary said nothing and Misty didn't look away from her window.

When no less than a minute passed by and the silence began to scream far too loudly, Misty spoke.

"How are _you_ feeling?"

She shifted her gaze from her window to examine him.

He shrugged cooly, but in the one night Misty had recently spent with Gary she could already pick up the doubt in his ice king act–the tight line his soft lips fell into, the dimples in his cherubic cheeks which retained a frown, the slight indentations in the corners of his eyes which she presumed were where the muscles were which counteracted a furrow of the brow.

"Just tired. You know," followed that nonchalant shrug.

Misty breathed an audible sigh which she hoped would clearly identify her disbelief.

Never taking his eyes off of the road, he only reiterated that familiar elevation of his shoulders.

"Fine. Be difficult," Misty said coldly, crossing her thin, yellow-encased arms across her stomach and looking, too, out the windshield.

Gary just chuckled, which only intensified her angered fuming. She bit at her lip harshly to stop whatever string of threats or swears or mean things might have come rushing out. She wasn't about to let her temper get the best of her like it usually did and ruin her only support system.

Finally, they turned onto a street which struck a cacophonous key of nostalgia, and it wasn't long until she saw the whitewashed picket fence, the rainbow of flowers which sprouted throughout the colorful gardens which encircled the house, the soft cyan of the siding which decorated the girlish exterior, and, sooner than she had even imagined, they were pulling into the driveway of Delia Ketchum's house. _Ash's _house. A whirlwind of anticipating butterflies spun madly in her stomach.

They were there.

But, much to Misty's chagrin, they were there far too early. She cursed at herself for telling Delia she'd help with decorations. She knew hanging streamers and cleaning and whatever else she had to assist Delia with would only jolt up her already sparking anticipation. The whirlwind inside her spun bitterly as the butterflies' course steepened nearly into her throat. She felt like she was going to vomit.

They were there.

_There were there_.

She was going to see Ash.

Clutching at her ribs, she pursed her lips to hold back whatever her stomach was violently threatening to push up. She hadn't eaten breakfast, and she bit her tongue in fear that she would puke a fluttering, saliva-glossed flock of shimmering Monarchs. Holding back a frustrated growl at her weakness, she knotted a fist in concentration and opened the car door.

Delia was on the porch in seconds, her attempt at a quiet arrival ruined by a little squeal she couldn't help but emit.

"Misty! Gary! Thank goodness you're here–wait, did you come together? Oh, but never mind that now–I have a thousand different streamers and balloons and I just don't know what color scheme to go with! And–oh, come inside, I'll get you something to drink before we get started, and _oh_, it's just so nice you guys are here!"

Delia's appearance had hardly changed–in fact, Misty could only pick up a few things that had changed about the charming woman. The beams of sunlight played oddly off the sprouting hair at her temples, perhaps indicating a few strands of freshly grown gray hair. But despite that there was hardly a change. Misty smiled inwards at that, comforted by the fact that a year hadn't taken Delia and morphed her into a rough, wretched woman, malevolent towards all those around her. She was still just _Delia_, the mother she never had.

"Mime, mime!" Mr. Mime came walking out shortly after Delia, not noticing the newcomers but instead concentrated fully on the bristled broom in his hand, his human-esque face creased in concentration as he swept away the barely existent dirt.

Delia swivelled on her heel and, putting a hand on Mr. Mime's crimson orb of a shoulder, said, "You're doing a wonderful job Mr. Mime, keep it up."

Delia entered the house before shooting a reassuring, gentle smile over her shoulder and gesturing vaguely with her delicate hand to come inside. Misty and Gary looked at one another, his eyes questioning and hers gently constructed to make her look determined, before she nodded. Walking closely-knit they proceeded into Delia's cozy little home, Mr. Mime sweeping furiously behind their tracks.

Just like Delia, time hadn't touched the house in the least bit. Everything was positioned where she remembered it to be; entering immediately into the spacious living room through the front door, she could see to the left two couches, one against the wall and one facing the brick fireplace, and a little love seat opposite the couch against the wall, ultimately making a square when the fireplace was taken into account with the three other sofas. A richly-hued cherry wood coffee table, round in shape, was positioned in the middle. To the right was a set of stairs, which Misty knew led up to both Delia and Ash's rooms along with a few guest rooms and a bathroom. Against the wall which formed the stairs was a rectangular table, naked except for ten or more brightly-colored rolls of streamers and a folded up table cloth, as well as a crystalline punch bowl–empty–and several bags of balloons. The floor was made of an ambrosial type of wood, whirls and knots of the ancestral trees scars present in the pattern–but then the floor ended, turning abruptly to a carnation pink carpet which went from the couches on. The fireplace wasn't yet lit, and it lay hollow and empty and cold, contrasting the rooms warm and comfortable atmosphere substantially. Misty shuddered as she examined the blackened interior brick, the silver scales of ash lying dead and lifeless, looking so fragile that a sneeze could put them to flight. Crossing her arms, she turned from the fireplace and looked at the flash of Delia she had seen for only a moment through the kitchen door frame before she was again lost to the wall. But Delia emerged soon again, balancing three crystal wine glasses between her ring finger and pinky, with the other carrying an emerald bottle. There was a dark liquid bubbling in it, though Misty decided that it wasn't really dark in hue and that the bottle just made it look sinister in appearance. Delia flashed her a delightful little grin and Misty couldn't help but smile modestly back. She and Gary followed Delia to the couch-area of the room, Delia positioning herself on the love seat as she set the three wine glasses and bottle on the table and Misty and Gary following suit and sitting on the couch opposite Delia. Delia pushed a glass towards each of them and both of the trainers took one shyly.

Delia held up the mysterious green bottle as she said, "Sparkling grape juice. No drinking except for the adults tonight," she winked at them and poured some fizzing liquid into each of their cups. Misty couldn't help but giggle and out of the corner of her eye she saw Gary's lips curve into a small smile.

After a few sips between all of them, Delia set her glass on the table and crossed a leg, leaning on it with folded arms which soon after she perched her head upon.

"So," she started, pausing and then filling the gap with a merry little giggle, "How are you both?"

Misty looked at Gary, who nodded an indicating head at her, and she began.

"Content, I guess would be an accurate enough answer. Cerulean's starting to get boring, with living there so long and all," Misty shrugged and concluded with a sigh, knotting her little hands together and placing them elegantly on her knees. Content. What a joke. More like a strange mix of anxious, nervous, desolate, excited, hopeful, and at the same time hopeless. But she saved her breath, because her real emotions weren't making any sense. If she were to say all of those out loud one would either call her out on her illogical paradox of words or assume simply that she was drunk.

Delia nodded sympathetically and said, "Trust me dear, I understand."

Remembering the bare town, stripped nearly of all building and industrialization albeit a few houses here and there, Misty remembered that Delia was in fact a resident of Pallet Town. If anyone understood contentment, it would indeed be her. Misty couldn't help but feel Delia had read her mind, however, and too was understanding of the billion emotions that were coursing through her.

Delia turned then to Gary and Misty disregarded her apparent paranoia.

Gary shrugged as well, tipping his head to the side nonchalantly, "Just trying to decide what to do with my future. College, no college. Researcher, trainer. Marriage, being a playboy. I'm stuck between all of it."

Delia laughed and Misty couldn't help but blush _for_ him and look away shyly, smiling awkwardly at the distant floor. If anyone knew how to break the ice, it sure as hell was Gary Oak.

"Personally, I'd go for college, researcher, and marriage. But that's just me," Delia said, her mouth set in a grin; somehow, however, even through that mischievous smile her face retained a wise, motherly quality to it.

"I understand where you're coming from with the college thing. Hey, if I can squeeze college in, it's for the better. And the researcher thing, yeah, I get that too. It's difficult to be a successful trainer, and with Grandpa and all, I'm bound to make it. But...marriage? _Ugh_, Mrs. Ketchum, I liked ya 'til answer three."

All three laughed, taking little sips from their glasses.

When the giggling died down a bit, Delia turned once more to Misty, her eyes suddenly concerned, as if some memory was brought up to the surface of her thoughts.

"You didn't end up at the Pokemon Center last night, did you?"

Misty shook her head, "No, no, I didn't, don't worry."

"Oh, I hope not," Delia said, her head shaking condescendingly, no longer supported by her hands, which were now laying in her lap, "Where'd you go then? A motel?"

Misty could see Delia's face struggling for composure and Misty undoubtedly knew Delia's mind was going through a slide show of all of Viridian's cheapest motels, greasy and roach-infested with paper-thin walls through which you would be sang to bed by the lullaby of either a violent drug deal or the vulgar sounds of a man and his penny-priced hooker.

Misty immediately cut whatever Delia was picturing short, untangling her hands and waving them defensively in front of her while vigorously shaking her head.

"No, no, no! Nothing like that! I actually slept at Gary's place," Misty said, nodding at Gary in recognition.

Delia looked between the two, once, twice, three times, before she once more focused on Misty, if not a little more skeptically than before, saying, "Ah, okay. Well that's good then, I suppose."

Gary interjected now, a sneer on his lips as he said, "Don't worry Mrs. Ketchum, we were _mostly _good."

"_Please_," Misty said, flushing a deep fuchsia and rolling her eyes, "We watched zombie movies and went to bed. _In different rooms_. Don't let the playboy try to fool you."

"_Pfft_, never trust a redhead Mrs. Ketchum. Example A."

Misty turned and palmed a playful blow to the side of his head.

"Shut _up_ Gary," Misty said, and though furious, she ended her sentence with laughter.

Rubbing his head, Gary said to Delia, "Okay, so we _were_ good. I'm just testing out which buttons I can and can't press in public," Gary grinned impishly.

Delia was leaned back into the couch and watching the scene with amusement, a few giggles escaping her throughout it.

More small talk ensued between the three, mostly unimportant generalities. The subject of Ash's arrival time–or Ash at all, for that matter–was carefully avoided by Misty, and Misty could only pray that Gary caught on and wouldn't mention him either.

Thankfully though, all three finished off their drinks and Delia led them once more to the table at the right of the room.

"Alright, color scheme," she said, her arms sweeping over the bagged rainbow scenery.

"Blue definitely has to be in it," Misty said immediately, biting her tongue and cursing at herself mentally. She knew blue was Ash's favorite color.

Luckily, Delia didn't question Misty's intuitive answer, instead replying with, "Blue is good! Everyone likes blue. Okay, so blue. What else?"

Misty kept quiet this time, not wanting to further present herself with openings to Ash-talk, and Gary spoke up, suggesting gray.

"Gray is wonderful! And it goes with blue. Good thinking, Gary," Delia complimented as she pulled out four rolls of streamers: two light shades of blue and gray and the other two only a shade darker in color than the first two. She then separated out a package of balloons and held it up to them, beaming an excited smile.

"They're silver! I forgot I had these, and just never had the opportunity to ever actually use them. This is fantastic!"

Misty looked up at Gary through a strand of her hair, smiling. He knew how to make a lady happy, even if it was only by choosing the correct color in a color scheme for them. His eyes met hers, catching her off guard and sending a pink blush to her cheeks. He only smiled that 'I'm-Great,-I-Know' grin back at her, however, before he broke their short-lived gaze.

Delia was searching through the bags of balloons still, and eventually she pulled out two bags of blue ones, each bag a different shade.

"Here we are. Okay, so I'm not real picky on how you decorate, just hang them wherever you think they look right," She briefly turned back to the table, and set something in both Gary and Misty's hand. Misty looked at it, realizing it was tape.

"You'll need that," Delia said, smiling, "And I'll go start on food. Try to have fun with it!"

Delia left to the kitchen quickly, leaving Misty and Gary dumbfounded at the table.

After a short pause, Misty clapped her hands together, mustering up a bit of enthusiasm, and said, "Alright, let's get to it."

They hung streamers everywhere: draped over both doorframes, around the stair railing and spinning around each peg that came off of the railing, connecting it to each stair, around the outer upper edge of the room and around the table itself. Misty requested Gary's help to get it on the ceiling, seeing as he had at least a foot on her in height and could actually reach it. They twirled it around so that from each corner of the room a streamer spun and met with the other three until they were united in the center. Misty taped it there, and then, after blowing up three or so balloons and twisting them together, stuck the cluster of spheres right at the verging point of the streamers. Together they blew up the remaining balloons and threw them around the room, placing theme wherever they found a spot which seemed much too nude.

Throughout their streamer-hanging and balloon-blowing Delia had came into the room and set the table, and Misty could see now that the punch bowl was filled with a few glass squares of ice in a pinkish juice. The table cloth–she could now make out the image on it, a scene which depicted the 150 types of Pokemon native to Kanto–was unfolded and spread across the table, and bowls of chips and macaroni salads and noodles and plates filled with brownies and cookies and an assortment of other goodies were on display. It was all very mouth-watering, and Misty found herself unable to deter her mind away from Delia's chocolate chip cookies, warm and moist and fresh out of the oven, the chips in them still liquid cocoa from being in the extreme heat. But she fought it to the best of her ability–she didn't want her stomach to have ammo in case the sensation to puke completely overcame her once again. Not that it left, it still lingered hungrily in her throat, and every time she found herself accidentally thinking of the impending night it undulated angrily and she had to bite her lower lip and close her eyes forcefully for it to recede.

When they were finished, Gary stood in front of the door, his right arm across his chest and his left hand on his jaw bone in concentration, as he examined the final product of their haphazard decor. Misty stood next to him, one hip jutted out and her small girlish hand resting on it as she, too, looked over the wild strings of streamers and numerous blue spheres of balloons.

Gary was the first to speak, concluding, "Not too bad, if I do say so myself."

Misty grinned, "I have to agree. You're not bad at this, for being a boy and all. Usually men have absolutely no taste in decorations. Or anything, for that matter."

Gary turned to her then, hunching a bit to bring their faces closer together.

"Hey, I'm not like other guys and you know it."

The air was absolutely still around them, time suddenly frozen. Misty felt her breath hitch at his sudden closeness and choice of words. Gary must've felt it too, that screaming yet silent air settled between them, because he straightened up quickly, furthering the distance between them once more.

"I do have good tastes in some things, unlike all these other 'men' you just compared me to," Gary rushed through his clarification.

"I know," was all Misty could say.

_Weird_.

At that moment Delia walked slowly into the room, her upper torso cloaked by a huge, marshmallowy cake, clad in light blue thickly-wisped frosting.

She set it down on the table as the sugary pastry smell tantalizingly wove through the air, finally filling in the one empty gap in the puzzle of food.

Delia rested her hands on her hips in what appeared to be a giddy accomplishment, and Gary and Misty quickly flanked either side of her to look at her baked trophy.

In a gray cursive, a dainty line carefully spelt out:

_Welcome Home, Ash!_

* * *

The blaze in the brick fireplace danced and swirled like something alive, breathing and moving and terrifying. It was even more frightening lit, emblazoning the room with flitting shadows and an ocher sheen.

Misty sat on the love seat with Gary, sipping mousily at the straw which delved into her can of grape soda. The room had filled significantly, a loud buzz of chatter and gossip and chuckles and giggles hanging permanently in the air–each new person who arrived like another grain of sand in the hourglass which marked her demise. Because she knew when she saw that final granulate of sand–of _diamond_, rather–her ribs would crush into a million pieces trying to contain her heart, and her heart would just soar away as if it were one of the butterflies in her stomach, a fluttering, beautiful Monarch flying south in migration. And though she knew it would temporarily feel so nice, going too far south only led to the polar, icy land of devastation. Somewhere deep inside her, an echo called out to her, screaming that she would not be able to handle seeing him. And another part of her fully grasped and believed that to be true. But a stronger, more potent part of her told her she _needed_ to see him, even if it was the most dangerous threat to her unreadily thrashing heart.

She scanned the room once more. There were a thousand strangers everywhere. They all seemed to know each other, they were all talking so smoothly, so easygoingly. Milk and honey and tea and biscuits, they all had it so _fucking_ easy! Her eyes passed by Brock, who was in the corner of the room, his arm around a coral-haired vixen who she presumed to be Julia (_do _all _Nurse Joys look like _that_ when they're not in uniform?_). He had grown a beard since the last time she had seen him, and he stroked it frequently while conversing with the hundred strangers circling him. His eyes met hers once, and he excitedly smiled and waved to her, while she weakly held up a limp little hand and twitched it in acknowledgment. Misty had also seen Tracey, drawing solemnly at the foot of the staircase, fifteen or twenty girls arching around him in curiosity, teetering, tottering, and tittering annoyingly in his ear, suggesting his next piece of art to be _her_, or _her_, or _her_! Her stomach had done a hostile back-flip when she had seen Dawn and May, who came together, dressed rather seductively for both their age and the occasion.

_Seductive, yet beautiful. You're just jealous that you could never pull that little red dress off as well as May could, or that you could never get your hair looking as nice as Dawn's. Envious twit._

She had to force herself to sigh and look away from the two gorgeous in defeat, sipping again at her grape soda feebly.

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her own, warm and comforting. It gripped hers firmly and yet somehow as soft as a feather, like a vice grip made of peacock plumes sent from some far off heaven, sent to her and her alone, just for tonight. She turned and her eyes met Gary's brooding, intense stare, a dark swirl of mahogany cumulonimbus. She felt her eyes were being raided: he could probably see every deteriorated, ragged hole in her ragged excuse for a soul.

But his words surprised her.

"Red, you are so beautiful, and I know you've been hurt so much, but you can do it, you can make it through tonight. You're strong, and I've seen that strength show through a _thousand_ times since we met up yesterday. So you'll be okay, I know it. Okay?"

Misty felt her breath catch through the grape-flavored straw. She couldn't manage any words, the shock that overcame her at hearing Gary speak so sure and seriously and passionately clogging up her vocal chords, so she bobbed her head in a silent nod.

And then there was a knock at the door.

She felt surreal. Everything around her roaring, glimmering, gravity gone as she felt her heart beat slowly and heavily as it raced on, and yet at the same time everything was silvery, ephemeral, and clear.

_Just like drowning_.

The doorknob turned agonizingly slowly, the light toying off of the brass door knob with every revolution as if it were mocking a crazed kaleidoscope.

And then suddenly the door was pushing open, and then someone was stepping in.

Her heart was stammering and yet whispering at the same time, pounding painfully like a jackhammer against her ribs and yet wanting to cease its flight altogether. Her breath was caught in some magic hold, she couldn't breathe.

Their eyes met, that molten mocha whirlpool of beauty settling on her, and suddenly she was sinking, sinking,

_sinking._

* * *

**i hope i made the wait worth it. my god, i had to wait an entire week for my plug to come in the mail for me to be able to charge this godforsaken piece of technological shit, and then, coincidentally enough, i got grounded almost directly afterwards. actually, i'm still grounded, and i'm kind of taking a risk by using this thing, but you guys have waited so long and i know by now i would be **_**dying **_**for an update**_**. **_**so here it is, and hopefully updates won't take as long as this one did from here on out.**

**thank you guys soooo much for your patience, and remember, reviews keep me going.**

**OH, and if this chapter messes up while uploading, as chapter two did, PLEEEASE tell me so i can fix it as soon as possible.**

**xoxo**


	6. Chapter 6

**NOTE: if the site butchers this chapter, please let me know as soon as possible. it's happened only with the second chapter so far, but i've been paranoid ever since. so if you see words where they don't belong or sentences cut short or paragraphs out of order or anything peculiar, pleeeease let me know.**

**disclaimer: i don't own pokemon!**

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If Misty could choose the way in which her life ended, she knew, without any doubt in her mind, that she would choose a death in her most natural element: drowning. But now she was reconsidering. The cerulean twists and twirls of streamers cocooned around her, the room spinning suddenly like a crazed aquatic carousel. Everything was blue and gray and darkening–as if she was submerging further and further into the indigo blankets of a lake...of a dreary unconsciousness...of the soft and inviting blackness of death. Somewhere in her mind she had given into that witch offering her a poisoned apple, and it seemed as though that very apple cast a frightening hex on her lungs: they were frozen solid, unable to either inhale or exhale. They stung viciously for even the slightest stream of oxygen to wind itself into them, to unthaw the witch's curse. But she also knew very well that the witch was in fact she herself–she was battling her own will to breathe, to speak, to function. Her heart fluttered and swayed fragilely in her abdominal cavity, too aching for the oxygen which that nasty sorceress sealed away.

The balloons and streamers and strangers and gasps and sighs and _oohs_ and _aww_s were suddenly too much. Hell, they had been 'too much' since the beginning; now the circuit was beyond questioningly sparking from overload. The clockwork of her mind reeled rapidly, far too quickly–the blood rushed to her cheeks, to her head...she felt as if she were going to faint. Misty was vaguely aware of the rooms inhabitants closing in on Ash, and for that she was relieved: once their eyes parted she believed the witch inside her would in unison release her daunting grip. Maybe the witch wasn't Misty's will after all, maybe it was just those soft eyes to which her own gaze connected to now, those warm pools of chestnut, so similar to two cups of cocoa after a day out in the snow: they were so tender, so deliciously easy to get lost in, and they completely melted something within her, similar to how hot chocolate would defrost the esophagus after a bitingly cold day spent making snow angels.

She felt a grip tighten on her own hand. Her brow pulled together in puzzlement: _what was that_? A soft thumb grazed over her knuckles, enveloping her hand in a soft down of warmth. A muffled hymn drummed against whatever bubbles had enveloped her ears. Was someone speaking to her? Ah, yes, someone was. But she couldn't pull her eyes away, not yet. Ash held her gaze like a venus fly trap held its prey–there was no escape unless aided from some higher being. That higher being came, smashing into his chest with force–he looked like he had the wind knocked out of him. Someone was hugging him, speaking to him, the room circled around him, and finally, _finally_, the hundreds of heads scissored their stare.

That voice was still talking to her–it caressed her mind, saving her from her doomed watery grave. She grabbed onto the life saver he threw at her with fervor: "Misty. _Misty_. Breathe, Red."

She felt a bluster of blistering chilled air break its way into her lungs alas. Her face grew colder with the renewed oxygen, the blood no longer clustering to her paling cheeks.

She didn't know when, but she had stood. There was a ghost next to her, trying to speak to her through the white noise in a distant world. It cackled through her ears, through some weak radio signal: "Misty. _Misty_. RED!"

Her lips were numb. Was she trying to speak? If she was it surely came out as incoherent

gibberish. But the ghost next to her seemed to understand her, for he responded with: "Come on, you need fresh air, _now_."

She was being tugged through the room, away from those sparkling chocolate eyes she so craved. Through the kitchen, through a door. Her feet were numb, she was stepping through liquid cement, wading through the water she had just previously been suffocating in.

A door slammed shut. Whatever fog had creeped ever-so-slyly into her mind digressed, blown away with the night time breeze. Someone had slipped some magical serum into the dark, brooding gusts which instantly cured her of whatever had paralyzed her. She blinked, fighting back sudden exhaustion and the desire to pass out right there.

"Jeez, Red, what the hell was that?"

The phantom spoke next to her, his voice a flowing ribbon, tying itself around her muffled ears. Misty turned then, facing Gary fully.

"I-I...I don't know," she stumbled stupidly through her words. She didn't know the answer herself, she couldn't give him a piece of information which fully escaped her.

"You looked like you were gonna pass out," he said, a current of worry undulating in his voice. She felt the knuckles on her left hand being brushed once more, except this time she knew for sure that it was Gary doing so. The stark anxiety was evident both verbally and physically: his eyes bore into hers, pleading for answers, the stars from the bruised night sky twinkling in that brooding mahogany.

Crossing her free hand delicately across her stomach, she shook her head nervously, "It felt like it too. I don't know what happened."

Gary pulled her hand which had so nervously wove itself around her waist and held it in his own grip–he was now holding both her hands. It wasn't awkward or detestable–contrarily, it was the most comforting gesture she had received thus far that night.

Gary remained silent but never stole his gaze back from her own.

"I guess...the boy just has a pull over me," Misty attempted a nervous laugh to clear any tension evident in her demeanor, but it was rough and sore, leaving her throat like sandpaper.

"He definitely has _somethin'_ over ya, enough of a _something_ to keep you from breathing. Jeez, Red, if I didn't know any better I'd say he's bad for your health," he brought a smile to his lips and nudged a shoulder playfully into her own, giving her hand a squeeze as he did so.

"Yeah," Misty agreed solemnly, her head wilting like a tired water lily preparing itself for an intense drought, "I don't think I can talk to him."

Though her head was still lolling downwards, she felt Gary's hands tense around her own. He was not pleased.

"But you _have_ to," his tone was incessant: he wasn't giving up.

Misty sighed, wholly exasperated. She ripped her hands from his and threw them in the air, defeated.

"_I know, _okay? Just give me a few minutes to _think_, to _breathe_," her eyes didn't leave the ground, they were completely unwilling to meet Gary's. Misty knew the raw pleading which glimmered in them would convince her to go talk to Ash right there and then, and she couldn't do that–she just needed to compose herself right now, to prepare herself.

Gary was quiet. The burn in Misty's tone didn't register as it flew past her lips, but now the bite was fully sinking in.

_Please don't let me have upset him._

Misty still couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze, but her own hands did find his, limp by his side. She took them once more, softly stealing them into her own grip. He and his hands didn't respond. She stole a peak up at him through her lashes.

He was glaring towards the forest to his right, his cushioned lips contrasting against the tight line he forced them into. He either looked mad...or insanely forlorn. She couldn't tell which.

"Gary...," she started, but he lanced through her sentence with his own.

"Just talk to him, _alright_?" Gary retorted, and, as if on cue, she heard the backdoor creak open. She felt the atmosphere change, the breeze flip directions, her lungs wheeze as they again froze. She knew it was him before he spoke, before she looked, before she felt her heart begin its crazed, foreign dancing.

"I...oh..._um_...sorry to interrupt...."

Even though the tone which cascaded around her sounded completely baffled, it was still beautiful–rugged but like honey as it played in her ear drums, almost like tattered silk.

Gary snatched his hands away from hers, dropping them once more to his sides, except this time they fell like boulders–they were knotted into angry fists, not limp as they had been before. Her hands stung bitterly where his had just been, and she felt a dull glimmer of ache in her heart, but she was quiet, unable to gather enough air in her lungs to protest his theft.

"No, no, Ashy-boy, she's all yours," Gary said, his voice composed and icy. But there was a faint, barely legible trace of venom laced through it...of hurt. No sooner had he snatched his hands away had he began walking cattily towards the back door, and she heard it shut cooly behind wherever Gary Oak had disappeared to.

And then silence.

The loudest silence Misty Waterflower had possibly ever endured in her entire nineteen years of life. It screeched and clawed and wrestled rabidly through the night air, alive and electric and incredibly tangible, an entire being in itself.

Though her back was to him, she felt him move somehow–though he was probably fifteen feet away–felt him move five, ten feet closer. She could sense where he was, the compass rose in her heart pointing directly at him in his rhythmic, andante waltz.

Velvet wove carefully through the air, flowing into her ears, that perfect, _perfect_ voice.

"Hey Mist."

Her heart fluttered at his words. The _nerve_ of it, getting all haphazard over a salutation as simple as that. Maybe it was the nickname, maybe it was the words, _maybe it was him_. Though she careened against that last option, she knew it was right on target.

Someone needed to wind up Misty's voice box, it still wasn't working. She swallowed hard and nodded her head at him in recognition.

"It's...ah...it's pretty out tonight, isn't it?"

She knew his hands went into his pockets: she could tell by the nervous tone which played in his voice. He always had put his hands in his pockets when he was nervous. That, or he had hidden those gorgeous eyes behind the thick tuft of bang which curtained his face. _His lovely, lovely face._

"_Beautiful._"

How she did it she did not know, but she managed to choke out a single word. And though it was just a mere sigh, a soft whisper which sifted through her lips like honey, she knew he heard her. She wondered, however, if he knew it was directed at him, not the sky which Ash had been referring to. The sky could have been under fire, painted with nuclear bombs and zeppelins, and she could not have been any less aware of it. All she could see, though she could not see him, and all she could smell, though she could not smell him, all she could feel, though she had not touched him...was Ash.

"Yeah," Ash said. His tone was airy and light, yet sparkling with some unidentifiable emotion. An assassin must have been hiding in the near wood, for she felt a dagger twist uncomfortably into her gut as she recognized it to be that same emotion she had bore witness to the last night they had seen each other. That emotion which brought flames to his eyes and hail to his words. Misty shuddered in remembrance.

"So...I, um...I have a goal tonight," Ash continued, fervor burning into his voice as his courage rose an octave, "A goal that I've had for a year. And...and I'm not backing out of it now, now that I finally have a chance to ask it!"

_A goal?_

She hadn't realized that thought had passed through her lips, she asked it. She asked it, though she was entirely unsure whether or not she wanted to know the answer. This goal–was it to finally break things officially between them? That's the only thing which plagued Misty's mind. She wrapped her arms delicately around her waist, bracing herself to endure whatever he threw at her.

"Yeah, a goal. Look, Mist," the courage was gone now, some new emotion that sounded eerily similar to grief replacing it, "I just...I gotta know...."

Misty had stiffened. Her lips drew into a tight line, her eyes were wide with anticipation. Her heart fluttered faster than a mocking bird, thrusting uncomfortably against her ribs.

"...What did I do wrong, Mist? Why did you just walk away? Why did you avoid me for an _entire year_?"

The words came out like an angry flood, rushed and thrashing.

Misty swivelled on her heel now, facing towards him. She expected his head to be bobbing down, his thick raven hair to be veiling his eyes from her. But he wasn't. He was staring down upon her, eyes smoldering and whirling and burning into her own with amber flames of courage and passion and that something else–that _something else_ Misty could not identify, that _something else_ which had colored his eyes the last time they met, that _something else_ which now somehow seemed vaguely familiar....

Dumfounded.

Startled.

Angry.

Astonished.

Amazed.

Confused.

Misty didn't know which emotion to run on. She decided to keep her mental slate board blank for once–what if she picked one emotion, pushed upon it, but in turn pushed him away? No, she wasn't having that. Not now. She was keeping her emotional gas tank empty, not fueling it just yet.

"_What?_"

Ash took a hand from his pocket and swept at the back of his neck, no doubt a gesture derived from anxiety. She had seen it a thousand times–after being proven wrong, while trying to calm someone down, while organizing his own thoughts.

"What did I do wrong?" Ash asked, a little more slowly. Under normal circumstances where Misty could breathe, she probably would've been offended at both his apparent dissection of his three-part questionnaire and the slowly-said-broken-apart words. She would've accused him of accusing _her_ of being stupid, and _that's_ why he broke the sentence down to such an elementary level. But not tonight. Misty couldn't let her usually-uncontrollable temper run rampant and ruin her chances.

"You did nothing wrong, Ash," Misty spoke softly, not averting her eyes from his own. She wanted to let him know that she was _not _lying. She couldn't afford to break eye contact in case he thought she was being insincere by doing so. Misty couldn't anyways, those cocoa pools which churned passionately in his eyes sucked her in far too much.

"Okay, then why did you walk away?"

Misty could tell he was straining to keep his face composed, but still a tug at his soft lips occurred. Not an upwards tug, instead one which sent his beautifully innocent face into complete disarray. A frown.

But it disappeared even sooner than it had happened. Ash's face was again composed and blank.

"I...My sisters...It was late Ash, they were probably going to be worried...."

_Liar, liar, liar._ Her sisters hadn't worried about her since she was twelve. When she had embarked on her own Pokemon journey, she too had inadvertently embarked into the dark realms of independence.

Ash knew. His brow furrowed, the currents in his eyes picking up, completely devouring her into molten cocoa.

"Did your sisters shut off your _phone_, too? Did they just lock you in your room for a year? Just stop, Misty. Give me the truth, _please_. I'm not mad, I'm just...I'm just kinda _hurt_, I guess...," Ash trailed off. His sentence began with a wildfire of fury but had softened marginally into the gentle yet daggered blankets of heartbreak. His head began tilting downward–tendrils of his hair began sifting across his face and were now dancing precariously against his eye lashes. He was losing his fiery edge, and Misty watched it all play out through his posture and features.

Misty felt her eyebrows crease, her facade wrinkle.

"I got scared, Ash."

"Scared?"–he looked up then, the hair which had been threatening to graze over his eyes retreating–"Misty, you're the bravest girl I know. What were you _scared _of?"

Misty faltered, noticeably this time. Her face fell as she frowned and her eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement.

_What _was_ I scared of?_

Folding her hands once more in front of her stomach, she turned back around, not wanting to let Ash see her stammer so badly.

"I think...I was scared for you," Misty finally said.

There was a pause. Misty desperately wished she hadn't turned around so she could see whatever emotions were playing across Ash's face. He was quiet. Was he actually _thinking_? That was definitely a new feature to faze Ash.

"...Scared..for _me_? What? Why?" Ash asked. Mystification laced through his voice; it wasn't a frustrated confusion, as was usual with Ash...it was a confusion that sounded much more like a plead to understand.

With every shake Misty's head bobbed further downwards. She was almost looking at her feet.

"I didn't want to bring you down anymore. I was scared that if we kept being whatever it was that we were that I was going to keep doing just that. Obviously I upset you, you remember, at the Cerulean County Carnival?"–she didn't wait for his answer before she continued–"You were upset. You asked me if I hated you. I didn't know how to respond, I was just so...so _caught off guard_. Because...it was the total opposite."

Silence plagued them once more. Misty felt no need to fill it, however. She was quiet, her stare glued to the ground.

"The total opposite...," Ash murmured.

Misty was quiet but nodded, though she was unsure whether or not Ash was even looking at her to acknowledge her gesture.

"You loved me?"

Misty knew she visibly flinched. She hadn't been expecting him to really evaluate what the opposite of 'hate' was. She figured he would think it to be 'like', or 'adore', or, hell, even 'dinosaur'. It was Ash for Christ's sake.

"_Ugh_, Ash, I don't know," Misty threw her hands lightly into the air, trying to act out an over-exasperated role. Maybe he would drop it.

"Yes you do."

But of course he _wouldn't_. Again, this was Ash. Stubborn, immature, somewhat newly intellectually-developed Ash.

Misty sucked in a breath of air through her clenched teeth.

_Don't get mad don't get mad don't get mad_.

"I don't know if I did or not," Misty retorted, an accidental edge to her voice.

"Yes, you _do_. How can you not know if you _loved_ someone, Mist?"

"_I just don't._ Okay? Even if I did know, why would I tell you? There's no point in knowing now."

"Why do you think that?" Ash asked slowly.

"Because it's a year later. _An entire year later_. Even if I did love you then, it would've faded by now. Love doesn't work out like it does in movies," Misty heard venom creep into her voice. It was slight, but it was there. Inside her there was a war waging to keep her anger at bay, but still, hints of it leaked out in intervals where normally it would've flooded.

"That's not true," Ash spoke softly. His voice was closer. She felt his presence drift a step nearer to her turned back.

"How would _you_ know?" Misty retorted softly, her voice weakening. She hugged her arms tighter around her waist almost as if she were trying to keep her heart from exposing itself.

Silence erupted between them–a pause longer than all the others.

Misty could suddenly hear everyone inside the house, cheering and merry and joyous. She had somehow forgotten where they were, the time, the place, the event. Ash's effect on her hadn't dampened, even after a year. When she was with him, _he_ was the only one in the entire world who existed.

Ash's voice wove like honey throughout the night, once again slicing the stagnant air to bits.

"Because _I_ loved you, Misty," Ash spoke, slowly and quietly, "And you probably think I'm crazy, but I think I still partially do. _An entire year later_."

He didn't mock her, he merely used her own words as ammo. And ammo it was...Misty felt an ice pick slam forcefully into her heart–her heart which was screaming and beating and fluttering once more, her heart, which for now, was much more than content. She felt it, through their entire conversation, melt off entire glacier chunks. She felt the icebergs drift off, she felt her veins light up with fresh blood as the thawing of her heart occurred. She felt fresh and renewed blood course wildly into her arteries, her lungs. And at that moment, she realized she was feeling _alive_.

_He loved her_. He _partially_ still might. Misty swallowed back an avid excitement which scratched needily at the back of her throat.

_Don't get ahead of yourself._

"Yeah, but you love me the way someone loves their sibling. That's not the type of love I was talking about," Her words wreaked a certain grief into her system. Her mouth was working on its own tonight, throwing out possibilities which played only in the cobwebbed, hidden corners of her mind. She hadn't even thought of that before her mouth so openly stated its possibility.

_Definitely getting ahead of myself...._

"That's not the type of love _I _was talking about either," Ash stated, flames again creeping into his voice.

She forced herself to turn back around, to make her eyes meet with his. He was closer now, much, _much_ closer. She could feel and smell his breath as it tangled dangerously through her nostrils–spearmint and caramel and coffee. To anyone else that combination would be absolutely grotesque, but to her it was delicious, delightfully mouth-watering. His breaths were hot, passionate, radiating the flames which she had heard in his voice and seen in his eyes.

"Then, enlighten me Ash, what kind of love _were_ you talking about?" Misty asked, her voice cutting and poisonous. Her defenses were up, and she was bringing out the toxicity which seemed to always come best to her when put in a situation where real emotions were required...emotions that she didn't want to bring out for her own safety. So instead she brought out nuclear arms.

"Don't do that, Mist," he warned. His eyes were stern, the fire igniting madly in them. He drew ever so closer to her in his warning.

"Do _what_?" Misty asked, frustrated. Ash seemingly saw right through her, and it was frustrating her to no end.

"_That_. That attitude. You always use it when you wanna avoid a subject."

Misty's arms unraveled and she balled her hands into furious little fists.

"_I don't know what you're talking about_," Misty said, inching her way up to his face centimeter by centimeter with every word as she stood on her tip-toes. Ash was impossibly tall though; it was futile for her to be trying to match his gaze.

The atmosphere snapped. Misty hadn't realized it in her rage of words, but she had brought herself close–_too close–_to Ash. Their faces were almost touching. Misty felt his heated pants of breath pause as he too realized the rupture in space and time. Her eyes flicked to his lips, soft and pillowy, streams of chilled spearmint and luscious caramel seeping out through their gentle parting. Her self control was dwindling, her body taking control. She felt her achilles tendons stretch,–_stop!–_her back arch,–_STOP!_–her head tilt,–_stop stop STOP!–_

Somewhere far off, distant and foggy, Misty heard someone tear into their realm. Two giggles, high and girlish and obnoxious, shattered into their universe.

"Ash! Where are you? We haven't seen you in _forever_, cutie!"

"Yeah! Where'd you go?"

A back door slammed open with a velocity so strong it could've broken the sound barrier. Misty's face lit up, fuchsia tainting her cheeks in embarrassment. All her workings undid themselves–her heels dropped and her back aligned–she even took a step away and turned once more towards the woods.

"_There you are!_"

Those voices grated against her brain like a knife-tipped rake. They were girlish, and much too high, and far too _annoying_. She knew it was Dawn and May before Ash even spoke up. Misty vaguely wondered what took him so long to speak, but eventually decided that she was going to force herself not to care. She crossed her arms in determination.

"Uh...hey Dawn. Hey May. Long time no see, huh?" a nervous laugh ensued.

"_Tell_ me about it! So wha–" May started, but was cut off shortly by a very flustered Misty.

"I'll leave you three _lovebirds _alone while I go vomit."

Dawn squealed delightedly at the coined term 'lovebirds' but Ash spoke up quickly.

"I'm going to see you later Misty. This conversation _isn't_ over."

"We'll see about that," Misty muttered, walking into the Ketchum house once more, making sure to slam the door especially forcefully behind her.

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**i know, i know, it's a bit short AND i'm late. i'm going to be honest with you, when i started this, i was about 60% egoshipper and 40% pokeshipper. even though i thought egoshipping was ADORABLE, i still believed, very simply, that ash and misty were destined for eachother. but now...i'm not so sure. and now those percentages are more like 99 to 1. and because of that i'm losing motivation to write this story. ;(**

**super duper special intense appreciation goes out to Ronmione x3 and snooper roofle for reviewing pretty much every chapter thus far, you guys have really kept me going, thank you for having faith in me even though i am a noob to both this site and fanfiction as a whole. :)**

**and thanks go out to all those other reviewers too, of course. the two mentioned prior have just been there from the start of this story and i decided they needed an acknowledgment of my gratitude.**

**REMEMBER, REVIEWS KEEP ME GOING, even if my pace is a bit shot lately....**

**happy holidays my loves,**

**xoxo.**


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